[_9 May '08_]
In the _Edinburgh Review_ there is a disquisition on "Ugliness in
Fiction." Probably the author of it has read "Liza of Lambeth," and said
Faugh! The article, peculiarly inept, is one of those outpourings which
every generation of artists has to suffer with what tranquillity it can.
According to the Reviewer, ugliness is specially rife "just now." It is
always "just now." It was "just now" when George Eliot wrote "Adam Bede,"
when George Moore wrote "A Mummer's Wife," when Thomas Hardy wrote "Jude
the Obscure." As sure as ever a novelist endeavours to paint a complete
picture of life in this honest, hypocritical country of bad restaurants
and good women; as sure as ever he hints that all is not for the best in
the best of all possible islands, some witling is bound to come forward
and point out with wise finger that life is not all black. I once resided
near a young noodle of a Methodist pastor who had the pious habit of
reading novels aloud to his father and mother. He began to read one of
mine to them, but half-way through decided that something of Charlotte M.
Yonge would be less unsuitable for the parental ear. He then called and
lectured me. Among other aphorisms of his which I have treasured up was
this: "Life, my dear friend, is like an April day--sunshine and shadow
chasing each other over the plain." That he is not dead is a great tribute
to my singular self-control. I suspect him to be the _Edinburgh_ Reviewer.
At any rate, the article moves on the plane of his plain.
* * * * *
The Reviewer has the strange effrontery to select Mr. Joseph Conrad's
"Secret Agent" as an example of modern ugliness in fiction: a novel that
is simply steeped in the finest beauty from end to end. I do not suppose
that the _Edinburgh Review_ has any moulding influence upon the evolution
of the art of fiction in this country. But such nonsense may, after all,
do harm by confusing the minds of people who really are anxious to
encourage what is best, strongest, and most sane. The Reviewer in this
instance, for example, classes, as serious, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad,
and John Galsworthy, who are genuine creative forces, with mere dignified
unimportant sentimentalizers like Mr. W.B. Maxwell. While he was on the
business of sifting the serious from the unserious I wonder he didn't
include the authors of "Three Weeks" and "The Heart of a Child" among the
serious! Perhaps because the latter wrote "Pigs in Clover" and the former
was condemned by the booksellers! Nobody could have a lower opinion of
"Three Weeks" than I have. But I have never been able to understand why
the poor little feeble story was singled out as an awful example of female
licentiousness, and condemned by a hundred newspapers that had not the
courage to name it. The thing was merely infantile and absurd. Moreover, I
violently object to booksellers sitting in judgment on novels.