common with him, though he displays differences of a very essential
kind. Mr. Barrie has no such spiritual obsession as besets his elder. He
has the national reverence for sacred things, but it is probably rather
habitual and racial than dogmatic. I think his greatest charm lies in
the fact that he is at once old and new fashioned. He loves to deal with
a bygone form of life, a form of life which he is too young to remember
in all its intricacies, whilst he is not too young to have heard of it
plenteously at first hand, or to have known many of its exemplars. Few
things of so happy a sort can befall a child of imagination as to be
born on such a borderland of time. About him is the atmosphere of the
new, and dotted every here and there around him are the living mementoes
of the old--a dying age, which in a little while will cease to be,
and is already out of date and romantic. Steam and electricity and
the printing-press, and the universal provider and the cheap clothing
‘emporium,’ have worked strange changes. It was Mr. Barrie’s fortune to
begin to look on life when all these changes were not yet wrought;
to bring an essentially modern mind to bear on the contemplation of a
vanishing and yet visible past, to live with the quaint, yet to be able,
by mere force of contrast, to recognise its quaintness, and to be
in close and constant and familiar touch with those to whom the
disappearing forms of life had been wholly habitual. That the mere
environment thus indicated was the lot of hundreds of thousands makes
little difference to the especial happiness of the chance, for, as I
have said already, we can’t all be persons of genius, and it is only to
the man of genius that, the good fortune comes home.
If there is one truth in relation to the craft of fiction of which I
am more convinced than another, it is that all the genuine and original
observation of which a man is capable is made in very early life. There
are two very obvious reasons why this should be so. The fact that they
are obvious need not prevent me from stating them here, since I am not
writing for those who make a business of knowing such things. In the
first place, the mind is at its freshest; and all objects within its
scope have a keen-edged interest, which wears away in later life. In
the next place, the earliest observations are our own, unmixed with the
conclusions and prepossessions of other minds. A child has not learnt
the Dickens’ fashion, or the Thackeray fashion, or the Superior Person
fashion of surveying particulars and generals. He has not begun to
obscure his intelligence by the vicious habit of purposed note-takings
for literary uses. He looks at the things which interest him simply,
naturally, and with entire absorption. It is true of the most
commonplace people that as they grow old their minds turn back to
childhood, and they remember the things of half a century ago with more
clearness than the affairs of last week. Lord Lytton’s definition of a
man of genius was that he preserved the child’s capacity for wonder.
One of the astutest of living critics tells me that he finds a curiously
_logical_ characteristic in Mr. Barrie’s humour, but I confess that I am
not wholly clear as to his meaning. I find it characteristically Scotch,
and perhaps at bottom we mean the same thing. It is often sly, and so
conscious in its enjoyment of itself as to be content to remain unseen.
Often it lies in a flavour of the mind, as in whole pages of ‘My Lady
Nicotine,’ where it is a mere placid, lazy acquiescence in the generally
humorous aspect of things. Here the writer finds himself amused, and so
may you if you happen to be in the mood. At other times the fun bubbles
with pure spontaneity, as in the courtship of ‘Tnowhead’s Bell, which
is, I make bold to believe, as good a bit of Scotch rural comedy as we
have had for many a day. The comedy is broad, and touches the edge of
farce at times, but it is always kept on the hither-side by its droll
appreciation of character, and an air of complete gravity in the
narrator, who, for any indication he gives to the contrary, might be
dealing with the most serious of chronicles.
As I write I have before me a letter of Mr. Barrie’s, written to a
fellow-workman, in which he speaks of the ‘almost unbearable pathos’
of an incident in one of the latter’s pages. The phrase seems to fit
accurately that chapter in the ‘Window in Thrums’ where Jamie, after his
fall in London, returns to his old home, and finds his own people dead
and scattered. The story is simple, and the style is severe even to
dryness, but every word is like a nail driven home. It would be hard
to find in merely modern work a chapter written with a more masterly
economy of means, than this. And this economy of means is the most
striking characteristic of Mr. Barrie’s literary style. It is as
different from the forced economy of poverty as the wordy extravagance
of Miss Corelli is different from the exuberance of Shakspeare. It is
a reasoned, laborious, and self-chastening art, and within its own
limitations it is art at its acme of achievement What it has set itself
to do it has done.
These two, then, Dr. George Macdonald and Mr. J. M. Barrie, are the
men who worthily carry on, in their separate and distinct fashions, the
tradition which Sir Walter established. In a summary like this, where
it is understood that at least a loyal effort is being made to recognise
and apportion the merits of rival writers, the task of the critic
occasionally grows ungrateful. Nothing short of sheer envy can grudge
to Mr. Barrie a high meed of praise, but I think that his elder is his
better. The younger man’s distinction is very largely due to a fine
self-command, a faculty of self-criticism, which in its way cannot
easily be overpraised. He has not Stevenson’s exquisite and yet daring
appropriateness in the choice of words, but his humour is racier and
scarcely less delicate, and in passages of pathos he knows his way
straight to the human heart As the invention or discovery of new themes
grows day by day less easy--as the bounds of the story-teller’s personal
originality are constantly narrowing--the purely literary faculty, the
mere craft of authorship in its finer manifestations must of necessity
grow more valuable. Mr. Barrie is a captain amongst workmen, and there
is little fear that in the final judgment of the public and his peers
he will be huddled up with Maclarens and Crocketts, as he sometimes is
to-day. But Dr. Mac-donald, though he has not sought for the finenesses
of mere literary art with an equal jealousy, has inherited a bigger
fortune, and has spent his ownings with a larger hand. He has perhaps
narrowed his following by his faithfulness to his own inspiration, but
his books are a genuine benefaction to the heart, and no man can read
them honestly without drawing from them a spiritual freshness and purity
of the rarer sort. There is an old story of a discussion among the
students of their time as to the relative merits of Schiller and Goethe,
The dispute came to Schiller’s ears, and he laughingly advised the
combatants to cease discussion, and to be thankful that they had both.
I could take a personal refuge there with all pleasure, but the critical
rush to crown the new gods is a new thing, and, without stealing a leaf
from the brow of the younger writer, I should like to see a fresher and
a brighter crown upon the head of his elder and bigger brother.
X.--THE PROBLEM SEEKERS--SEA CAPTAIN AND LAND CAPTAIN
It is so long a time since Mr. W. H. Mallock published the ‘Romance of
the Nineteenth Century’ that the book might now very well be left alone,
if it were not for the fact that in a fashion it marked an epoch in
the history of English literature. It was, so far as I know, the first
example of the School of the Downright Nasty. For half a year it ran
in ‘Belgravia’ side by side with a novel of my own, and under those
conditions I read as much as I could stand of it. Its main object
appears to be to establish the theory that a young woman of refined
breeding may be an amateur harlot. The central male figure of the book
is a howling bounder, who has a grievance against the universe because
he can’t entirely understand it. Within the last two or three years it
has occurred to Mr. Mallock to recast the book, and in a preface dated
1893 (I think) he informs the world that on re-reading the story he
personally has found portions of it to be offensive. These portions he
declares himself to have eliminated, and he now thinks--or thought in
1893--that there is nothing on that score to cavil at. All I remembered
of the story was that a certain Colonel Stapleton debauched the mind of
the heroine by lending her obscene books with obscene prints attached.
This episode is retained, in spite of the work of purification which
has been performed; and it may be said that if the original novel were
nastier than this deodorised edition of it, it is very much of a wonder
how the critical stomach kept it down.
It is a refreshment to turn from this particular problem seeker to
the work of a writer like Mrs. Humphry Ward, who, if she invests the
questions she handles with more importance than actually belongs to
them, is as wholesome and sincere as one could ask. She has read both
deeply and widely, she thinks with sanity and clearness, she discerns
character, she can create and tell a story, her style is excellently
succinct and full, and any book from her pen may safely be guaranteed
to fill many charmed and thoughtful hours. She is still a seeker of
problems, and shares the faults of her school, inasmuch as she sets
herself to the solution of themes which all thoughtful people have
solved for themselves at an early age. It would be difficult, perhaps,
to find a better and more salutary stimulant for the mind of a very
young man or woman than ‘Robert Elsmere,’ to cite but one work of hers,
but to the adult intelligence she seems a day behind the fair. She
expends something very like genius in establishing a truth which is only
doubted by here and there a narrow bigot--that truth being that a man
may find himself forced to abandon the bare dogma of religion, and may
yet conserve his faith in the Unseen and his spiritual brotherhood
with men. ‘Robert Elsmere’ is a very beautiful piece of work, and it
is impossible not to respect the ardour which inspires it, and the many
literary excellences by which it is distinguished. But, all the same, it
leaves upon the mind a sense of some futility. It would be easy to
write a story which would prove--if a story can be imagined to prove
anything--the precise opposite of the truth so eloquently preached in
‘Robert Elsmere,’ and the tale might be perfectly true to the experience
of life. There are men who, parting with dogmatic religion, part with
religion altogether, and whose only chance of salvation from themselves
lies in the acceptance of a hard and fast creed. It would be easy
enough, and true enough, to show such a man assailed by doubt,
struggling and succumbing, and then going headlong to the devil. The
thing has happened many a time. Mrs. Humphry Ward shows another kind
of man, and depicts him most ably. Robert Elsmere is even a better
Christian when he has surrendered his creed than he was whilst he held
it, for he has reached to a loftier ideal of life, and he dies as a
martyr to its duties. But the story has the air of being controversial,
and fiction and controversy do not work well together. It is possible to
establish any theory, so far as a single instance will do it, when you
have the manufacture both of facts and of characters in your own hands.
Accept an extreme case. A practised novelist might take in hand the
character of a morose and surly fellow who was generous and expansive in
his cups. So long as the wretch was sober he might be made hateful; half
fill him with whisky, and you gift him with all manner of emotional good
qualities. The study might be real enough, but it would prove nothing.
The novelist who assails a controversial question begs everything, and
the answer to a problem so posed is worthless except as the expression
of an individual opinion. It may be urged--and there is force in the
contention--that there are many people who are only induced to think of
serious themes when they are dressed in the guise of fiction, as there
are people who cannot take pills unless they are sugar-coated. Again--as
admitted already--a mind in process of formation might be strengthened
and broadened by the influence of such a book as ‘Robert Elsmere.’ There
are some to whom its apparent trend of thought will appear to be simply
damnable. That one may have scant respect for their judgment, and no
share at all in their opinion, does not alter the fact that the weapon
employed against them is not and cannot be fairly used.
Many years ago, Mr. Clark Russell, whose name is now a household word,
was the editor of an ill-fated society journal. I was a contributor
to its little-read pages, and I came one day upon an article entitled
‘Pompa Mortis.’ This article was written in such astonishingly good
English, so clean, so hardbitten and terse, and yet so graceful, that
I could not resist the temptation to ask its author’s name. My editor
modestly acknowledged it for his own, and when I told him what I
thought of its style he confessed to a close study of Defoe and a great
admiration for him. I saw nothing more from his hand until I read ‘The
Wreck of the Grosvenor,’ the first of that series of sea stories which
has carried Mr. Russell’s name about the world. An armchair voyage with
Russell is almost as good as the real thing, and sometimes (as when the
perils and distresses of shipwreck are in question) a great deal better.
Had any man ever such an eye for the sea before, or such a power of
bringing it to the sight of another? Few readers, I fancy, care a copper
for his fable, or very much for his characters, except for the mere
moment when they move in the page; but his descriptions of sky and sea
linger in the mind like things actually seen. They are so sharp, so
vivid, so detailed, so true, that a marine painter might work from them.
And the really remarkable thing about them is the infinite variety of
these seascapes and skyscapes. He seems never to repeat himself. He is
various as the seas and skies he paints. One figures his mind as some
sort of marvellous picture gallery. He veritably sees things, and he
makes the reader see them. And all the strange and curious sea jargon,
of which not one landsman in a thousand understands anything--combings
and back-stays and dead-eyes, and the rest of it--takes a salt smack
of romance in his lips. He can be as technical as he pleases, and the
reader takes him on faith, and rollicks along with him, bewildered,
possibly, but trusting and happy. And Clark Russell has not only been
charming. He has been useful, too, and Foc’sle Jack owes him a debt
of gratitude. For though he does not shine as a draughtsman where the
subtleties of character are concerned, he knows Jack, who is not much of
a metaphysical puzzle, inside and out, and he has brought him home to us
as no sea-writer ever tried to do before. Years ago it seemed natural to
fancy that he might write himself out, but he goes on with a freshness
which looks inexhaustible. If I cannot read him with the old enjoyment
it is my misfortune and not his fault. If his latest book had been his
first I should have found in it the charm which caught me years ago.
But it is in the nature of things that an individual writer like Clark
Russell should be his own most dangerous rival.
Clark Russell is captain on his own deck, whether he sail a coffin or a
princely Indiaman of the old time. Sir Walter Besant is lord of his
own East End, and of that innocent seraglio of delightful and eccentric
young ladies to which he has been adding for years past Sir Walter
Besant is chiefly remarkable as an example of what may be done by a
steadfast cheerfulness in style. His creed has always been that fiction
is a recreative art, and we have no better sample of a manly and
stout-hearted optimist than he. He is optimistic of set purpose,
and sometimes his cheerfulness costs him a struggle, for he is
tender-hearted and clear-sighted, and he is the Columbus of ‘the great
joyless city’ of the East. He has had a double aim--to keep his work
recreative and to make it useful. In one respect he has been curiously
happy, for he once dreamt aloud a beautiful dream, and has lived to
find it a reality. It was his own bright hope which built the People’s
Palace, and a man might rest on that with ample satisfaction.
He has given us many well-studied types of character, but he excels in
the portraiture of the manly young man and the lovable young woman.
In this regard I find him at his apogee with Phyllis Fleming and Jack
Dunquerque, who are both frankly alive and charming. He is good, too, at
the portraiture of a humbug, and finds a humorous delight in him,
very much as Dickens did. There is more than a touch of Dickens in
his method, and in his way of seeing people, and, most of all, in the
warm-hearted cheer he keeps.
It is outside the purpose of this series to dwell on anything but
the literary value of the works of the people dealt with; but little
apology, after all, is needed for a side-glance at the work which Sir
Walter Besant has done for men of letters. He has worked hard at the
vexed and difficult question of copyright; he has founded an Authors’
Club and an authors’ newspaper; and he has devoted with marked
unselfishness much valuable time and effort to the general well-being
of the craft. He has stood out stoutly for the State recognition of
authorship, and in his own person he has received it. _Esprit de corps_
is a capital thing in its way. Whether it is well to have too much of
it in a body of men who hold the power of the Press largely in their
own hands, whilst at the same time publicity is the breath of their
nostrils, is perhaps an open question. But of Sir Walter Besant’s
single-mindedness in this voluntary work there is no shadow of doubt.
Remembering his popularity with the public, and the price he can command
for his work, it is evident that he has expended in the pursuit of his
ideal time which would have been worth some thousands of pounds to him.
He has striven in all ways to do honour to letters, and the esteem
in which he is held is a just payment for high purpose and unselfish
labour.
XI.--MISS MARIE CORELLI
In an article intended for this series and set under this lady’s name
(an article now suppressed, and therefore to be re-written), I fell into
an error which appears to have been shared by several of the critics
who dealt with what was then the latest of her books, ‘The Sorrows of
Satan,’ I assumed Miss Corelli to have drawn her own portrait, as she
sees things, in the character of ‘Mavis Clare.’ This belief has been
expressed--so it turns out--by other people, and I learn that Miss
Corelli has authoritatively denied it ‘She objects very strongly,’ so
says an inspired defender, ‘to a notion which was started by one of
the most distinguished of her interviewers, and absolutely denies the
assertion that she described herself as “Mavis Clare” in “The Sorrows
of Satan.”’ Miss Corelli, of course, knows the truth about this matter,
and nobody else can possibly know it, but it is at least permissible to
examine the evidence which led many separate people to the same false
conclusion. ‘Mavis Clare’ and Marie Corelli own the same initials, and
until the fact that this was a mere fortuitous chance was made clear by
Miss Corelli herself it seemed natural to suppose that an identity was
coyly hinted at. ‘Mavis Clare’ is a novelist, and so is Miss Corelli.
‘Mavis Clare’ is _mignonne_ and fair, ‘is pretty, and knows how to dress
besides,’ is a ‘most independent creature, too; quite indifferent to
opinions,’ All these things, as we learn from many sources, are true of
Miss Corelli also. It is said of Miss Corelli herself that ‘dauntless
courage, a clear head, and a tremendous power of working hard without
hurting herself have helped her to make a successful use of her great
gift. She is not afraid of anything. She “insists on herself,” and is
unique,’ It is to be noted that all this is said by Miss Corelli of
‘Mavis Clare,’ Miss Corelli is at war with the reviewers. So is ‘Mavis
Clare,’ Miss Corelli’s books circulate by the thousand. So do ‘Mavis
Clare’s.’ ‘Mavis Clare’ is utterly indifferent to outside opinion. So is
Miss Corelli. In point of fact, if anybody thought Miss Corelli a woman
of astonishing genius, and wrote an honest account of her, he would
describe her precisely as Miss Corelli has described ‘Mavis Clare.’
There is, in fact, a point up to which ‘Mavis Clare’ and Miss Corelli
are not to be separated. There are a score of things in any description
of the one which are indubitably true of the other. But when Miss
Corelli writes of ‘Mavis Clare’ in such terms as are now to be quoted we
begin to see that she is and must be indignant at the supposition that
she is still writing of herself: ‘She is too popular to need
reviews. Besides, a large number of the critics--the “log-rollers”
especially--are mad against her for her success, and the public know it.
Clearness of thought, brilliancy of style, beauty of diction--all these
are hers, united to consummate ease of expression and artistic skill.
The potent, resistless, unpurchasable quality of Genius. She wrote what
she had to say with a gracious charm, freedom, and innate consciousness
of strength. She won fame without the aid of money, and was crowned so
brightly and visibly before the world that she was beyond criticism.’
But is it not just within the bounds of possibility that Miss Corelli
began with some idea of depicting herself, and, discarding that idea,
took too little care to obliterate resemblances? Even here she trenches
too closely upon the truth to escape the calumnious supposition that she
is writing of herself. She _is_ too popular to need reviews. She is at
war with the critics, and she has induced a very large portion of the
public to believe that ‘a number of the critics--the “log-rollers”
especially--are mad against her for her success.’
Were I, the present writer, to invent a fictional character, to give him
for the initials of his name the letters D. C. M., to describe him
as awkward and burly, with an untidy head of grey hair, to make him a
novelist, a Bohemian and a wanderer, and then to paint him as a man of
genius and an astonishing fine fellow, I should expect to be told that
I had been guilty of a grave insolence. If I could honestly say that the
resemblances had never struck me, and that the egregious vanity of the
picture was a wholly imaginary thing, I should, of course, desire to be
believed, and I should, of course, deserve to be believed. But I should
encounter doubt, and I should not be disposed to wonder at it. If I were
annoyed with anybody I should be annoyed with myself for having given
such a handle to the world’s ill-nature.
Accepting Miss Corelli’s disclaimer, one is still forced to the
conclusion that she has fallen into a serious indiscretion.
In ‘The Murder of Delicia’ we are made acquainted with another
lady-writer who enjoys all the popularity of Miss Corelli and of ‘Mavis
Clare,’ who has the genius and the eyes and the stature and the hair
of both. ‘As a writer she stood quite apart from the rank and file of
modern fictionists.’ ‘The public responded to her voice, and clamoured
for her work, and as a natural result of this, all ambitious and
aspiring publishers were her very humble suppliants. Whatsoever
munificent and glittering terms are dreamed of by authors in their
wildest conceptions of a literary El Dorado were hers to command; and
yet she was neither vain nor greedy.’ One thanks God piously that yet
she was neither vain nor greedy; but one can’t keep the mouth from
watering. Ah! those wildest conceptions of a literary El Dorado!
‘Delicia’ gets 8,000L. for a book. May it be delicately hinted that this
sum is only approached in the receipts of one living lady-writer, and
that the lady-writer’s name is ------? Wild horses shall not drag this
pen further.