[_4 Feb. '09_]
As a novelist, a creative artist working in the only literary "form" which
widely appeals to the public, I sometimes wonder curiously what the public
is. Not often, because it is bad for the artist to think often about the
public. I have never by inquiry from those experts my publishers learnt
anything useful or precise about the public. I hear the words "the
public," "the public," uttered in awe or in disdain, and this is all. The
only conclusion which can be drawn from what I am told is that the public
is the public. Still, it appears that my chief purchasers are the
circulating libraries. It appears that without the patronage of the
circulating libraries I should either have to live on sixpence a day or
starve. Hence, when my morbid curiosity is upon me, I stroll into Mudie's
or the _Times_ Book Club, or I hover round Smith's bookstall at Charing
Cross.
* * * * *
The crowd at these places is the prosperous crowd, the crowd which
grumbles at income-tax and pays it. Three hundred and seventy-five
thousand persons paid income-tax last year, under protest: they stand for
the existence of perhaps a million souls, and this million is a handful
floating more or less easily on the surface of the forty millions of the
population. The great majority of my readers must be somewhere in this
million. There can be few hirers of books who neither pay income-tax nor
live on terms of dependent equality with those who pay it. I see at the
counters people on whose foreheads it is written that they know themselves
to be the salt of the earth. Their assured, curt voices, their proud
carriage, their clothes, the similarity of their manners, all show that
they belong to a caste and that the caste has been successful in the
struggle for life. It is called the middle-class, but it ought to be
called the upper-class, for nearly everything is below it. I go to the
Stores, to Harrod's Stores, to Barker's, to Rumpelmeyer's, to the Royal
Academy, and to a dozen clubs in Albemarle Street and Dover Street, and I
see again just the same crowd, well-fed, well-dressed, completely free
from the cares which beset at least five-sixths of the English race. They
have worries; they take taxis because they must not indulge in motor-cars,
hansoms because taxis are an extravagance, and omnibuses because they
really must economize. But they never look twice at twopence. They curse
the injustice of fate, but secretly they are aware of their luck. When
they have nothing to do, they say, in effect: "Let's go out and spend
something." And they go out. They spend their lives in spending. They
deliberately gaze into shop windows in order to discover an outlet for
their money. You can catch them at it any day.
* * * * *
I do not belong to this class by birth. Artists very seldom do. I was born
slightly beneath it. But by the help of God and strict attention to
business I have gained the right of entrance into it. I admit that I have
imitated its deportment, with certain modifications of my own; I think its
deportment is in many respects worthy of imitation. I am acquainted with
members of it; some are artists like myself; a few others win my sympathy
by honestly admiring my work; and the rest I like because I like them. But
the philosopher in me cannot, though he has tried, melt away my profound
and instinctive hostility to this class. Instead of decreasing, my
hostility grows. I say to myself: "I can never be content until this class
walks along the street in a different manner, until that now absurd
legend has been worn clean off its forehead." Henry Harland was not a
great writer, but he said: _Il faut souffrir pour être sel._ I ask myself
impatiently: "When is this salt going to begin to suffer?" That is my
attitude towards the class. I frequent it but little. Nevertheless I know
it intimately, nearly all the intimacy being on my side. For I have
watched it during long, agreeable, sardonic months and years in foreign
hotels. In foreign hotels you get the essence of it, if not the cream.
* * * * *
Chief among its characteristics--after its sincere religious worship of
money and financial success--I should put its intense self-consciousness
as a class. The world is a steamer in which it is travelling saloon.
Occasionally it goes to look over from the promenade deck at the steerage.
Its feelings towards the steerage are kindly. But the tone in which it
says "the steerage" cuts the steerage off from it more effectually than
many bulkheads. You perceive also from that tone that it could never be
surprised by anything that the steerage might do. Curious social
phenomenon, the steerage! In the saloon there runs a code, the only
possible code, the final code; and it is observed. If it is not observed,
the infraction causes pain, distress. Another marked characteristic is its
gigantic temperamental dullness, unresponsiveness to external suggestion,
a lack of humour--in short, a heavy and half-honest stupidity: ultimate
product of gross prosperity, too much exercise, too much sleep. Then I
notice a grim passion for the _status quo_. This is natural. Let these
people exclaim as they will against the structure of society, the last
thing they desire is to alter it. This passion shows itself in a naïve
admiration for everything that has survived its original usefulness, such
as sail-drill and uniforms. Its mirror of true manhood remains that
excellent and appalling figure, the Brushwood Boy. The passion for the
_status quo_ also shows itself in a general defensive, sullen hatred of
all ideas whatever. You cannot argue with these people. "Do you really
think so?" they will politely murmur, when you have asserted your belief
that the earth is round, or something like that. And their tone says:
"Would you mind very much if we leave this painful subject? My feelings on
it are too deep for utterance." Lastly, I am impressed by their attitude
towards the artist, which is mediæval, or perhaps Roman. Blind to nearly
every form of beauty, they scorn art, and scorning art they scorn artists.
It was this class which, at inaugurations of public edifices, invented the
terrible toast-formula, "The architect _and contractor_." And if epics
were inaugurated by banquet, this class would certainly propose the health
of the poet and printer, after the King and the publishers. Only sheer
ennui sometimes drives it to seek distraction in the artist's work. It
prefers the novelist among artists because the novel gives the longest
surcease from ennui at the least expenditure of money and effort.
* * * * *
It is inevitable that I shall be accused of exaggeration, cynicism, or
prejudice: probably all three. Whenever one tells the truth in this island
of compromise, one is sure to be charged on these counts, and to be found
guilty. But I too am of the sporting race, and forty years have taught me
that telling the truth is the most dangerous and most glorious of all
forms of sport. Alpine climbing in winter is nothing to it. I like it. I
will only add that I have been speaking of the solid _bloc_ of the caste;
I admit the existence of a broad fringe of exceptions. And I truly
sympathize with the _bloc_. I do not blame the _bloc_. I know that the
members of the _bloc_ are, like me, the result of evolutionary forces now
spent. My hostility to the _bloc_ is beyond my control, an evolutionary
force gathering way. Upon my soul, I love the _bloc_. But when I sit among
it, clothed in correctness, and reflect that the _bloc_ maintains me and
mine in a sort of comfort, because I divert its leisure, the humour of the
situation seems to me enormous.
* * * * *
[_11 Feb '09_]
I continue my notes on the great, stolid, comfortable class which forms
the backbone of the novel-reading public. The best novelists do not find
their material in this class. Thomas Hardy never. H.G. Wells, almost
never; now and then he glances at it ironically, in an episodic manner.
Hale White (Mark Rutherford), never. Rudyard Kipling, rarely; when he
touches it, the reason is usually because it happens to embrace the
military caste, and the result is usually such mawkish stories as "William
the Conqueror" and "The Brushwood Boy." J.M. Barrie, never. W.W. Jacobs,
never. Murray Gilchrist, never. Joseph Conrad, never. Leonard Merrick,
very slightly. George Moore, in a "Drama in Muslin," wrote a masterpiece
about it twenty years ago; "Vain Fortune" is also good; but for a long
time it had ceased to interest the artist in him, and his very finest work
ignores it. George Meredith was writing greatly about it thirty years ago.
Henry James, with the chill detachment of an outlander, fingers the
artistic and cosmopolitan fringe of it. In a rank lower than these we have
William de Morgan and John Galsworthy. The former does not seem to be
inspired by it. As for John Galsworthy, the quality in him which may
possibly vitiate his right to be considered a major artist is precisely
his fierce animosity to this class. Major artists are seldom so cruelly
hostile to anything whatever as John Galsworthy is to this class. He does
in fiction what John Sargent does in paint; and their inimical observation
of their subjects will gravely prejudice both of them in the eyes of
posterity. I think I have mentioned all the novelists who have impressed
themselves at once on the public and genuinely on the handful of persons
whose taste is severe and sure. There may be, there are, other novelists
alive whose work will end by satisfying the tests of the handful. Whether
any of these others deal mainly with the superior stolid comfortable, I
cannot certainly say; but I think not. I am ready to assert that in quite
modern English fiction there exists no large and impartial picture of the
superior stolid comfortable which could give pleasure to a reader of
taste. Rather hard on the class that alone has made novel-writing a
profession in which a man can earn a reasonable livelihood!
* * * * *
The explanation of this state of affairs is obscure. True, that
distinguished artists are very seldom born into the class. But such an
explanation would be extremely inadequate. Artists often move creatively
with ease far beyond the boundaries of their native class. Thomas Hardy is
not a peasant, nor was Stendhal a marquis. I could not, with any sort of
confidence, offer an explanation. I am, however, convinced that only a
supreme artist could now handle successfully the material presented by the
class in question. The material itself lacks interest, lacks essential
vitality, lacks both moral and spectacular beauty. It powerfully repels
the searcher after beauty and energy. It may be in a decay. One cannot
easily recall a great work of art of which the subject is decadence.
The backbone of the novel-reading public is excessively difficult to
please, and rarely capable of enthusiasm. Listen to Mudie subscribers on
the topic of fiction, and you will scarcely ever hear the accent of
unmixed pleasure. It is surprising how even favourites are maltreated in
conversation. Some of the most successful favourites seem to be hated, and
to be read under protest. The general form of approval is a doubtful
"Ye-es!" with a whole tail of unspoken "buts" lying behind it.
Occasionally you catch the ecstatic note, "Oh! _Yes_; a _sweet_ book!" Or,
with masculine curtness: "Fine book, that!" (For example, "The Hill," by
Horace Annesley Vachell!) It is in the light of such infrequent
exclamations that you may judge the tepid reluctance of other praise. The
reason of all this is twofold; partly in the book, and partly in the
reader. The backbone dislikes the raising of any question which it deems
to have been decided: a peculiarity which at once puts it in opposition to
all fine work, and to nearly all passable second-rate work. It also
dislikes being confronted with anything that it considers "unpleasant,"
that is to say, interesting. It has a genuine horror of the truth neat. It
quite honestly asks "to be taken out of itself," unaware that to be taken
out of itself is the very last thing it really desires. What it wants is
to be confirmed in itself. Its religion is the _status quo_. The
difficulties of the enterprise of not offending it either in subject or
treatment are, perhaps, already sufficiently apparent. But incomparably
the greatest obstacle to pleasing it lies in the positive fact that it
prefers not to be pleased. It undoubtedly objects to the very sensations
which an artist aims to give. If I have heard once, I have heard fifty
times resentful remarks similar to: "I'm not going to read any more bosh
by _him_! Why, I simply couldn't put the thing down!" It is profoundly
hostile to art, and the empire of art. It will not willingly yield. Its
attitude to the magic spell is its attitude to the dentist's gas-bag. This
is the most singular trait that I have discovered in the backbone.
* * * * *
Why, then, does the backbone put itself to the trouble of reading current
fiction? The answer is that it does so, not with any artistic, spiritual,
moral, or informative purpose, but simply in order to pass time. Lately,
one hears, it has been neglecting fiction in favour of books of memoirs,
often scandalous, and historical compilations, for the most part
scandalous sexually. That it should tire of the fiction offered to it is
not surprising, seeing that it so seldom gets the fiction of its dreams.
The supply of good, workmanlike fiction is much larger to-day than ever it
was in the past. The same is to be said of the supply of genuinely
distinguished fiction. But the supply of fiction which really appeals to
the backbone of the fiction-reading public is far below the demand. The
backbone grumbles, but it continues to hire the offensive stuff, because
it cannot obtain sufficient of the inoffensive--and time hangs so heavy!
The caprice for grape-nut history and memoirs cannot endure, for it is
partially a pose. Besides, the material will run short. After all,
Napoleon only had a hundred and three mistresses, and we are already at
Mademoiselle Georges. The backbone, always loyal to its old beliefs, will
return to fiction with a new gusto, and the cycle of events will
recommence.
* * * * *
But it is well for novelists to remember that, in the present phase of
society and mechanical conditions of the literary market their
professional existence depends on the fact that the dullest class in
England takes to novels merely as a refuge from its own dullness. And
while it is certain that no novelist of real value really pleases that
class, it is equally certain that without its support (willing or
unwilling--usually the latter) no novelist could live by his pen. Remove
the superior stolid comfortable, and the circulating libraries would
expire. And exactly when the circulating libraries breathed their last
sigh the publishers of fiction would sympathetically give up the ghost. If
you happen to be a literary artist, it makes you think--the reflection
that when you dine you eat the bread unwillingly furnished by the enemies
of art and of progress!