AUDACIOUS MR. BENNETT
=i=
Mr. Bennett's audacity has always been evident. One might say that he
began by daring to tell the truth about an author, continued by daring to
tell the truth about the Five Towns, and has now reached the incredible
stage where he dares to tell the truth about marriage. This is affronting
Fate indeed. It was all very well for Arnold Bennett to write a play
called _Cupid and Commonsense_. Perhaps, in view of the fact that it is
one of the great novels of the twentieth century, it was all right for him
to create _The Old Wives' Tale_; but it cannot be all right for him to
compose such novels as _Mr. Prohack_ and his still newer story, _Lilian_.
Think of the writers who have stumbled and fallen over the theme of
marriage. There is W. L. George ... but I cannot bring myself to name
other names and discuss their tragic fates. There are those who have
sought to make the picture of marriage a picture of horror; but that was
because they did not dare to tell the truth. That marriage is all, no one
but Mr. Bennett seems to realise. No one but Mr. Bennett seems to realise
that, as between husband and wife, there are no such things as moral
standards, there can be no such thing as an ethical code, there can be no
interposition of lofty abstractions which Men call principles and appeal
to as they would appeal to a just God, Himself. No one but Mr. Bennett
seems to realise that the relation between a man and his wife necessarily
transcends every abstraction, brushes aside every ideal of "right" and
"wrong." Mr. Bennett, in the course of the amazing discoveries of an
amazing lifetime, has made the greatest discovery possible to mortals of
this planet. He has discovered that marriage occurs when a man and a woman
take the law into their own hands, and not only the human law, but the
divine.
It would be impossible for the hero of a Bennett novel of recent years to
be a character like Mark Sabre in _If Winter Comes_. Arnold Bennett's
married hero would realise that the health, comfort, wishes, doubts,
dissimulations; the jealousies, the happiness or the fancied happiness,
and the exterior appearances of the woman who was his wife abolish, for
practical purposes, everything else. It is due to Mr. Bennett more than to
anyone else that we now understand that while "husband" may be a correct
legal designation, "lover" is the only possible æsthetic appellation of
the man who is married. If he is not a lover he is not a husband except
for statutory purposes--that is all.
[Illustration: ARNOLD BENNETT]
=ii=
It is hard to describe _Lilian_. I will let you taste it:
"Lilian, in dark blue office frock with an embroidered red line round the
neck and detachable black wristlets that preserved the ends of the sleeves
from dust and friction, sat idle at her flat desk in what was called 'the
small room' at Felix Grig's establishment in Clifford Street, off Bond
Street. There were three desks, three typewriting machines and three
green-shaded lamps. Only Lilian's lamp was lighted, and she sat alone,
with darkness above her chestnut hair and about her, and a circle of
radiance below. She was twenty-three. Through the drawn blind of the
window could just be discerned the backs of the letters of words painted
on the glass: 'Felix Grig. Typewriting Office. Open day and night.' Seen
from the street the legend stood out black and clear against the faintly
glowing blind. It was eleven p.m.
"That a beautiful girl, created for pleasure and affection and expensive
flattery, should be sitting by herself at eleven p.m., in a gloomy office
in Clifford Street, in the centre of the luxurious, pleasure-mad, love-mad
West End of London seemed shocking and contrary to nature, and Lilian
certainly so regarded it. She pictured the shut shops, and shops and yet
again shops, filled with elegance and costliness--robes, hats, stockings,
shoes, gloves, incredibly fine lingerie, furs, jewels, perfumes--designed
and confected for the setting-off of just such young attractiveness as
hers. She pictured herself rifling those deserted and silent shops by some
magic means and emerging safe, undetected, in batiste so rare that her
skin blushed through it, in a frock that was priceless and yet nothing at
all, and in warm marvellous sables that no blast of wind or misfortune
could ever penetrate--and diamonds in her hair. She pictured thousands of
smart women, with imperious command over rich, attendant males, who at
that very moment were moving quickly in automobiles from theatres towards
the dancing-clubs that clustered round Felix Grig's typewriting office. At
that very moment she herself ought to have been dancing. Not in a smart
club; no! Only in the basement of a house where an acquaintance of hers
lodged; and only with clerks and things like that; and only a gramophone.
But still a dance, a respite from the immense ennui and solitude called
existence!"
After Lilian's mother died she had been "Papa's cherished darling. Then
Mr. Share caught pneumonia, through devotion to duty and died in a few
days; and at last Lilian felt on her lovely cheek the winds of the world;
at last she was free. Of high paternal finance she had never in her life
heard one word. In the week following the funeral she learnt that she
would be mistress of the furniture and a little over one hundred pounds
net. Mr. Share had illustrated the ancient maxim that it is easier to make
money than to keep it. He had held shipping shares too long and had sold a
fully-paid endowment insurance policy in the vain endeavour to replace by
adventurous investment that which the sea had swallowed up. And Lilian was
helpless. She could do absolutely nothing that was worth money. She could
not begin to earn a livelihood. As for relatives, there was only her
father's brother, a Board School teacher with a large vulgar family and an
income far too small to permit of generosities. Lilian was first
incredulous, then horror-struck.
"Leaving the youth of the world to pick up art as best it could without
him, and fleeing to join his wife in paradise, the loving, adoring father
had in effect abandoned a beautiful idolised daughter to the alternatives
of starvation or prostitution. He had shackled her wrists behind her back
and hobbled her feet and bequeathed her to wolves. That was what he had
done, and what many and many such fathers had done, and still do, to their
idolised daughters.
"Herein was the root of Lilian's awful burning resentment against the
whole world, and of a fierce and terrible determination by fair means or
foul to make the world pay. Her soul was a horrid furnace, and if by
chance Lionel Share leaned out from the gold bar of heaven and noticed it,
the sight must have turned his thoughts towards hell for a pleasant
change. She was saved from disaster, from martyrdom, from ignominy, from
the unnameable, by the merest fluke. The nurse who tended Lionel Share's
last hours was named Grig. This nurse had cousins in the typewriting
business. She had also a kind heart a practical mind, and a persuasive
manner with cousins."
Lilian in the office late at night has been engaged in conversation by her
employer, Mr. Grig, and Mr. Grig has finally come to the point.
"'You know you've no business in a place like this, a girl like you.
You're much too highly strung for one thing. You aren't like Miss Jackson,
for instance. You're simply wasting yourself here. Of course you're
terribly independent, but you do try to please. I don't mean try to please
merely in your work. You try to please. It's an instinct with you. Now in
typing you'd never beat Miss Jackson. Miss Jackson's only alive, really,
when she's typing. She types with her whole soul. You type well--I
hear--but that's only because you're clever all round. You'd do anything
well. You'd milk cows just as well as you'd type. But your business is
marriage, and a good marriage! You're beautiful, and, as I say, you have
an instinct to please. That's the important thing. You'd make a success of
marriage because of that and because you're adaptable and quick at picking
up. Most women when they're married forget that their job is to adapt
themselves and to please. That's their job. They expect to be kowtowed to
and spoilt and humoured and to be free to spend money without having to
earn it, and to do nothing in return except just exist--and perhaps manage
a household, pretty badly. They seem to forget that there are two sides to
a bargain. It's dashed hard work, pleasing is, sometimes. I know that. But
it isn't so hard as earning money, believe me! Now you wouldn't be like
the majority of women. You'd keep your share of the bargain, and
handsomely. If you don't marry, and marry fifty miles above you, you'll be
very silly. For you to stop here is an outrage against commonsense. It's
merely monstrous. If I wasn't an old man I wouldn't tell you this,
naturally. Now you needn't blush. I expect I'm not far off thirty years
older than you--and you're young enough to be wise in time.'"
=iii=
It will be seen that _Lilian_ has all the philosophy and humour which make
_Mr. Prohack_ a joy forever, and in addition the new novel has the strong
interest we feel in a young, beautiful, attractive, helpless girl, who has
her way to make in the world. And yet, I love _Mr. Prohack_. I think I
have by heart some of the wisdom he utters; for instance--
On women: "Even the finest and most agreeable women, such as those with
whom I have been careful to surround myself in my domestic existence, are
monsters of cruelty."
On women's clubs: "You scarcely ever speak to a soul in your club. The
food's bad in your club. They drink liqueurs before dinner at your club.
I've seen 'em. Your club's full every night of the most formidable
spinsters each eating at a table alone. Give up your club by all means.
Set fire to it and burn it down. But don't count the act as a
renunciation. You hate your club."
On his wife: "You may annoy me. You may exasperate me. You are frequently
unspeakable. But you have never made me unhappy. And why? Because I am one
of the few exponents of romantic passion left in this city. My passion for
you transcends my reason. I am a fool, but I am a magnificent fool. And
the greatest miracle of modern times is that after twenty-four years of
marriage you should be able to give me pleasure by perching your stout
body on the arm of my chair as you are doing."
On his daughter: "In 1917 I saw that girl in dirty overalls driving a
thundering great van down Whitehall. Yesterday I met her in her foolish
high heels and her shocking openwork stockings and her negligible dress
and her exposed throat and her fur stole, and she was so delicious and so
absurd and so futile and so sure of her power that--that--well ... that
chit has the right to ruin me--not because of anything she's done, but
because she is."
On kissing: "That fellow has kissed my daughter and he has kissed her for
the first time. It is monstrous that any girl, and especially my daughter,
should be kissed for the first time.... It amounts to an outrage."
On parenthood: "To become a parent is to accept terrible risks. I'm
Charlie's father. What then?... He owes nothing whatever to me or to you.
If we were starving and he had plenty, he would probably consider it his
duty to look after us; but that's the limit of what he owes us. Whereas
nothing can put an end to our responsibility towards him.... We thought it
would be nice to have children and so Charlie arrived. He didn't choose
his time and he didn't choose his character, nor his education, nor his
chance. If he had his choice you may depend he'd have chosen differently.
Do you want me, on the top of all that, to tell him that he must
obediently accept something else from us--our code of conduct? It would be
mere cheek, and with all my shortcomings I'm incapable of impudence,
especially to the young."
On ownership: "Have you ever stood outside a money-changer's and looked at
the fine collection of genuine banknotes in the window? Supposing I told
you that you could look at them, and enjoy the sight of them, and nobody
could do more? No, my boy, to enjoy a thing properly you've got to own it.
And anybody who says the contrary is probably a member of the League of
all the Arts."
On economics: "That's where the honest poor have the advantage of us....
We're the dishonest poor.... We're one vast pretence.... A pretence
resembles a bladder. It may burst. We probably shall burst. Still, we have
one great advantage over the honest poor, who sometimes have no income at
all; and also over the rich, who never can tell how big their incomes are
going to be. We know exactly where we are. We know to the nearest
sixpence."
On history: "Never yet when empire, any empire, has been weighed in the
balance against a young and attractive woman has the young woman failed to
win! This is a dreadful fact, but men are thus constituted."
On bolshevism: "Abandon the word 'bolshevik.' It's a very overworked word
and wants a long repose."
=iv=
The best brief sketch of Arnold Bennett's life that I know of is given in
the chapter on Arnold Bennett in John W. Cunliffe's _English Literature
During the Last Half Century_. Professor Cunliffe, with the aid, of
course, of Bennett's own story, _The Truth About an Author_, writes as
follows:
"He was born near Hanley, the 'Hanbridge' of the Five Towns which his
novels were to launch into literary fame, and received a somewhat limited
education at the neighbouring 'Middle School' of Newcastle, his highest
scholastic achievement being the passing of the London University
Matriculation Examination. Some youthful adventures in journalism were
perhaps significant of latent power and literary inclination, but a small
provincial newspaper offers no great encouragement to youthful ambition,
and Enoch Arnold Bennett (as he was then called) made his way at 21 as a
solicitor's clerk to London, where he was soon earning a modest livelihood
by 'a natural gift for the preparation of bills for taxation.' He had
never 'wanted to write' (except for money) and had read almost nothing of
Scott, Jane Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontës, and George Eliot,
though he had devoured Ouida, boys' books and serials. His first real
interest in a book was 'not as an instrument for obtaining information or
emotion, but as a book, printed at such a place in such a year by
so-and-so, bound by so-and-so, and carrying colophons, registers,
water-marks, and _fautes d'impression_.' It was when he showed a rare copy
of _Manon Lescaut_ to an artist and the latter remarked that it was one of
the ugliest books he had ever seen, that Bennett, now in his early
twenties, first became aware of the appreciation of beauty. He won twenty
guineas in a competition, conducted by a popular weekly, for a humorous
condensation of a sensational serial, being assured that this was 'art,'
and the same paper paid him a few shillings for a short article on 'How a
bill of costs is drawn up.' Meanwhile he was 'gorging' on English and
French literature, his chief idols being the brothers de Goncourt, de
Maupassant, and Turgenev, and he got a story into the Yellow Book. He saw
that he could write, and he determined to adopt the vocation of letters.
After a humiliating period of free lancing in Fleet Street, he became
assistant editor and later editor of Woman. When he was 31, his first
novel, _A Man From the North_, was published, both in England and America,
and with the excess of the profits over the cost of typewriting he bought
a new hat. At the end of the following year he wrote in his diary:
"'This year I have written 335,340 words, grand total: 224 articles and
stories, and four instalments of a serial called _The Gates of Wrath_ have
actually been published, and also my book of plays, _Polite Farces_. My
work included six or eight short stories not yet published, also the
greater part of a 55,000 word serial _Love and Life_ for Tillotsons, and
the whole draft, 80,000 words of my Staffordshire novel _Anna
Tellwright_.'
"This last was not published in book form till 1902 under the title of
_Anna of the Five Towns_; but in the ten years that had elapsed since he
came to London, Bennett had risen from a clerk at six dollars a week to be
a successful 'editor, novelist, dramatist, critic, connoisseur of all
arts' with a comfortable suburban residence. Still he was not satisfied;
he was weary of journalism and the tyranny of his Board of Directors. He
threw up his editorial post, with its certain income, and retired first to
the country and then to a cottage at Fontainebleau to devote himself to
literature.
"In the autumn of 1903, when Bennett used to dine frequently in a Paris
restaurant, it happened that a fat old woman came in who aroused almost
universal merriment by her eccentric behaviour. The novelist reflected:
'This woman was once young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from
these ridiculous mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her
singularities. Her case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a
heart-rending novel out of a woman such as she.' The idea then occurred to
him of writing the book which afterwards became _The Old Wives' Tale_, and
in order to go one better than Guy de Maupassant's 'Une Vie' he determined
to make it the life-history of two women instead of one. Constance, the
more ordinary sister, was the original heroine; Sophia, the more
independent and attractive one, was created 'out of bravado.' The project
occupied Bennett's mind for some years, during which he produced five or
six novels of smaller scope, but in the autumn of 1907 he began to write
_The Old Wives' Tale_ and finished it in July, 1908. It was published the
same autumn and though its immediate reception was not encouraging, before
the winter was over it was recognised both in England and America as a
work of genius. The novelist's reputation was upheld, if not increased, by
the publication of Clayhanger in 1910, and in June, 1911, the most
conservative of American critical authorities, the New York Evening Post,
could pronounce judgment in these terms:
"'Mr. Bennett's Bursley is not merely one single stupid English provincial
town. His Baineses and Clayhangers are not simply average middle class
provincials foredoomed to humdrum and the drab shadows of experience. His
Bursley is every provincial town, his Baineses are all townspeople
whatsoever under the sun. He professes nothing of the kind; but with quiet
smiling patience, with a multitude of impalpable touches, clothes his
scene and its humble figures in an atmosphere of pity and understanding.
These little people, he seems to say, are as important to themselves as
you are to yourself, or as I am to myself. Their strength and weakness are
ours; their lives, like ours, are rounded with a sleep. And because they
stand in their fashion for all human character and experience, there is
even a sort of beauty in them if you will but look for it.'"
BOOKS BY ARNOLD BENNETT
Novels:
A MAN FROM THE NORTH
THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL
THE GATES OF WRATH
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS
LEONORA
HUGO
A GREAT MAN
THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA
WHOM GOD HATH JOINED
THE OLD ADAM
BURIED ALIVE
THE OLD WIVES' TALE
CLAYHANGER
DENRY THE AUDACIOUS [In England, THE CARD]
HILDA LESSWAYS
THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS
HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND
THE GLIMPSE
THE CITY OF PLEASURE
THESE TWAIN
THE LION'S SHARE
THE PRETTY LADY
THE ROLL CALL
MR. PROHACK
LILIAN
Plays:
CUPID AND COMMONSENSE
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS
THE HONEYMOON
MILESTONES [With Edward Knoblauch]
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
THE TITLE
JUDITH
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
THE LOVE MATCH
SOURCES ON ARNOLD BENNETT
Who's Who [In England].
English Literature During the Last Half Century, by John W. Cunliffe.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Arnold Bennett. A booklet published by GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY, 1911.
(Out of print.)
The Truth About an Author, by Arnold Bennett. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.
The Author's Craft, by Arnold Bennett. GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.
Some Modern Novelists, by Helen Thomas Follett and Wilson Follett.
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY.
Arnold Bennett, by J. F. Harvey Darton, in the WRITERS OF THE DAY series.
The critical articles on Mr. Bennett and his individual books are too
numerous to mention. The reader is referred to the New York Public
Library or the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., and to the Annual
Index of Periodical Publications for the last twenty years.