[_11 July '08_]
The publishing season--the bad publishing season--is now practically over,
and publishers may go away for their holidays comforted by the fact that
they will not begin to lose money again till the autumn. It only remains
to be decided which is the novel of the season. Those interested in the
question may expect it to be decided at any moment, either in the _British
Weekly_ or the _Sphere_. I take up these journals with a thrill of
anticipation. For my part, I am determined only to decide which is not the
novel of the season. There are several novels which are not the novel of
the season. Perhaps the chief of them is Mr. E.C. Booth's "The Cliff End,"
which counts among sundry successes to the score of Mr. Grant Richards.
Everything has been done for it that reviewing can do, and it has sold,
and it is an ingenious and giggling work, but not the novel of the season.
The reviews of "The Cliff End," almost unanimously laudatory, show in a
bright light our national indifference to composition in art. Some
reviewers, while stating that the story itself was a poor one, insisted
that Mr. Booth is a born and accomplished story-teller. Story-tellers
born and accomplished do not tell poor stories. A poor story is the work
of a poor story-teller. And the story of "The Cliff End" is merely absurd.
It is worse, if possible, than the story of Mr. Maxwell's "Vivien," which
reviewers accepted. It would appear that with certain novels the story
doesn't matter! I really believe that composition, the foundation of all
arts, including the art of fiction, is utterly unconsidered in England. Or
if it is considered, it is painfully misunderstood. I remember how the
panjandrums condescendingly pointed out the bad construction of Mr. Joseph
Conrad's "Lord Jim," one of the most noble examples of fine composition in
modern literature, and but slightly disfigured by a detail of clumsy
machinery. In "The Cliff End" there is simply no composition that is not
clumsy and conventional. All that can be said of it is that you can't read
a page, up to about page 200, without grinning. (Unhappily Mr. Booth
overestimated his stock of grins, which ran out untimely.) The true art of
fiction, however, is not chiefly connected with grinning, or with weeping.
It consists, first and mainly, in a beautiful general composition. But in
Anglo-Saxon countries any writer who can induce both a grin and a tear on
the same page, no matter how insolent his contempt for composition, is
sure of that immortality which contemporaries can award.
* * * * *
Another novel that is not the novel of the season is Mr. John Ayscough's
"Marotz," about which much has been said. I do not wish to labour this
point. "Marotz" is not the novel of the season. I trust that I make myself
plain. I shall not pronounce upon Mr. Masefield's "Captain Margaret,"
because, though it has been splashed all over by trowelfuls of slabby and
mortarish praise, it has real merits. Indeed, it has a chance of being the
novel of the season. Mr. Masefield is not yet grown up. He is always
trying to write "literature," and that is a great mistake. He should study
the wisdom of Paul Verlaine:
_Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou._
Take literature and wring its neck. I suppose that Mr. H. de Vere
Stacpoole's "The Blue Lagoon" is not likely to be selected as the novel of
the season. And yet, possibly, it will be the novel of the season after
all, though unchosen. I will not labour this point, either. Any one read
"The Blue Lagoon" yet? Some folk have read it, for it is in its sixth
edition. But when I say any one, I mean some one, not mere folk. It might
be worth looking into, "The Blue Lagoon." _Verbum sap._, often, to Messrs.
Robertson Nicoll and Shorter. In choosing "Confessio Medici" as the book
of the season in general literature, Dr. Nicoll [Now Sir William Robertson
Nicoll] has already come a fearful cropper, and he must regret it. I would
give much to prevent him from afflicting the intelligent when the solemn
annual moment arrives for him to make the reputation of a novelist.