There is always much talk of sincerity in literature. It is a favourite
topic in literary circles, but often the argument sounds vain, for
English literature seldom attains sincerity; it may never do so until
Englishmen become Russians or Frenchmen, which, in spite of all
temptations, they are not likely to do.
Once upon a time we had a scapegoat ready, the circulating libraries,
for they made themselves ridiculous when they banned _Black Sheep_ and
_The Uncounted Cost_, while every now and then they have banned a book
of artistic value, likely to lead astray the mothers rather than the
daughters. Like the others, I foamed and fumed against the libraries,
who after all were only conducting their business according to their
commercial interests; like many others, I set up the idea that the
circulating library was a sort of trustee for literature, and after this
coronation I abused the library as one unworthy of a crown. It was
rather unfair, for the conditions which militate against the free
embodiment of brute facts into fiction form prevailed before the Library
Censorship was thought of; the libraries have not made public opinion
but followed it; nowadays they slightly influence it. For public opinion
is not the opinion of the public, it is the opinion of a minority. The
opinion of a minority makes the opinion of the majority, because the
latter has, as a rule, no opinion at all.
Who the censorious minority is I do not quite know. I have a vision of a
horrid conclave made up of the National Council of Public Morals, some
shopkeepers addicted to their chapel in default of other vices, of
anti-suffragists who think _Ann Veronica_ dangerous; it must number some
elderly ladies too, tired of converting the stubborn heathen, and I
think some bishops, quite elderly and still more ladylike; there are
celibates with whom celibacy has not agreed and who naturally want to
serve out the world; there is everybody who in the name of duty,
decency, self-control, purity, and such like catch-words, has stuffed
his ears against the pipes of Pan with the cotton wool of aggressive
respectability. A pretty congress, and like all congresses it talks as
abundantly and as virulently as any young novelist. The vocal opinion of
these people is well described in a recent successful revue: 'To the
pure all things are impure.' Often of late years it has run amuck. Not
long ago it caused the Municipal Libraries of Doncaster and Dewsbury to
banish _Tom Jones_ and to pronounce _Westward Ho!_ unfit for devout
Roman Catholics; it still spreads into the drama and holds such plays as
_Waste_, _Mrs Warren's Profession_, _Monna Vanna_ well hidden under the
calico and red flannel of British rectitude; it has had its outbursts in
picture palaces and music halls, where it happened to overlook the
Salome dance and living pictures; often it unchains merriment, as on the
perfect days when it cropped titles that seemed suggestive and caused
plays to appear under more stimulating titles of 'The Girl Who Went' ...
and 'The Girl Who Lost' ... (I do not remember what she lost, but I
passionately want to know; such are the successes of Puritanism).
It is true that in some directions Puritanism has recently weakened.
Plays long outcast, such as 'Damaged Goods,' 'Ghosts,' and 'The Three
Daughters of Monsieur Dupont' have unashamedly taken the boards, but I
fear that this does not exhibit the redemption of virtue by sin: if the
newspapers had not conducted a campaign for the protection of the
notoriously guileless New Zealand soldiers against the flapper with the
hundred heads (every one of them filled with evil), if contagious
diseases had not suddenly become fashionable, these plays would still be
lying with the other unborn in the limbo of the Lord Chamberlain. But
Puritanism has long teeth; it can still drive out of politics our next
Charles Dilke, our next Parnell, however generous or gifted; it still
hangs over the Law Courts, where women may be ordered out, or where
cases may be heard _in camera_; it still holds some sway over everything
but private life, where humanity recoups its public losses.
Puritan opinion has therefore a broader face of attack on the novel than
is afforded by the Library Censorship. For the latter can injure a book
but it cannot suppress it; on the whole banned books have suffered, but
they have also benefited because many people buy what they cannot
borrow, and because many buy the books which the Puritans advertise as
unfit to read. (They are much disappointed, as a rule, unless they are
themselves Puritans.) That buying class is not very large, but it
counts, and I suppose we must charitably assume that the people who post
to the bookseller to purchase the works which the library has rejected
are supporters of literary sincerity; we must form our private opinion
as to that. But whether the people who buy the banned book are or are
not eager to obtain four-and-six penn'orth of truth, the fact remains
that they do buy, that the deplorable authors do live, and that they do
persist in writing their regrettable novels. The libraries have not
killed sincerity; they have done no more than trammel it. For instance,
in the well-known cases of _The Devil's Garden_, _Sinister Street_, and
_The Woman Thou Gavest Me_, the faltering hesitation of the circulating
libraries resulted in a colossal advertisement, of which Mr Maxwell and
Mr Compton Mackenzie made the best, and Mr Hall Caine of course a little
more. The libraries did not deprive of sustenance the authors of
_Limehouse Nights_ and _Capel Sion_, and in their new spirit did not
interfere when Mr Galsworthy's heroine, in _Beyond_, made the best of
one world and of two men.
The assassins of sincerity are the publisher and the policeman. Dismiss
the illusion that banned books are bold and bad; for the most part they
are kindly and mild, silly beyond the conception of Miss Elinor Glyn,
beyond the sentimental limits of Mrs Barclay; they are seldom vicious in
intent, and too devoid of skill to be vicious in achievement. The real
bold books are unwritten or unpublished; for nobody but a fool would
expect a publisher to be fool enough to publish them. There are, it is
true, three or four London publishers who are not afraid of the
libraries, but they are afraid of the police, and any one who wishes to
test them can offer them, for instance, a translation of _Le Journal
d'une Femme de Chambre_. A publisher is to a certain extent a human
being; he knows that works of this type (and this one is masterly) are
often works of art; he knows that they are saleable, and that assured
profits would follow on publication, were the books not suppressed by
the police. But he does not publish them, because he also knows that
the police and its backers, purity societies and common informers, would
demand seizure of the stock after the first review and hurry to Bow
Street all those who had taken part in the printing and issue of the
works. As a result many of these books are driven underground into the
vile atmosphere of the vilest shops; some are great works of art; one
is, in the words of Mr Anatole France, 'minded to weep over them with
the nine Muses for company.' Need I say more than that _Madame Bovary_,
the greatest novel the world has seen, is now being sold in a shilling
paper edition under a cover which shows Madame Bovary in a sort of
private dining-room, dressed in a chemise, and preparing to drink off a
bumper of champagne. (Possibly the designer of this cover has in his
mind sparkling burgundy.)
Several cases are fresh in my memory where purity, living in what Racine
called 'the fear of God, sir, and of the police,' has intervened to stop
the circulation of a novel. One is that of _The Yoke_, a novel of no
particular merit, devoid of subversive teaching, but interesting because
it was frank, because it did not portray love on the lines of musical
comedy, because it faced the common sex problem of the middle aged
spinster and the very young man, because it did not ignore the peril
which everybody knows to be lurking within a mile of Charing Cross. _The
Yoke_ enjoyed a large sale at 6s. and was not interfered with,
presumably because those who can afford 6s. may be abandoned to the
scarlet woman. It was then published at a shilling. Soon after, the
secret combination of common informer, purity group, and police forced
the publisher into a police court, compelled him to express regret for
the publication, and to destroy all the remaining copies and moulds.
That is a brief tragedy, and it in no wise involves the library system.
Another tragedy may be added. In 1910 Sudermann's novel, _Das Hohe
Lied_, was published under the title of _The Song of Songs_. It is not a
very interesting novel; it is long, rather crude, but it relates
faithfully enough the career of a woman who lived by the sale of
herself. The trouble was that she made rather a success of it, and it
was shown in a few scenes that she did not always detest the incidents
of this career, which is not unnatural. In December, 1910, two
inspectors from the Criminal Investigation Department called on the
publisher and informed his manager that a complaint had been made
against the book; it was described as obscene. The officers apparently
went on to say that their director, Sir Melville Macnaghten, did not
associate himself with that opinion, but their object was to draw the
publisher's attention to the fact that a complaint had been made.
Thereupon, without further combat, the publisher withdrew the book.
Nobody can blame him; he was not in business to fight battles of this
kind, and I suppose that few British juries would have supported him.
They would, more likely, have given the case against him first and tried
to get hold of a private copy of the book after, presumably to read on
Sunday afternoons. The interesting part of the business is that the
accusation remained anonymous, that the police did not associate itself
with it, but came humbly, helmet in hand, to convey the displeasure of
some secret somebody with some secret something in the book. And there
you are! That is all you need to snuff out the quite good work of a
novelist with a quite good European reputation.
Once upon a time, I thought I might myself have a taste of the purity
medicine. In 1910 I had ready for publication a novel called _A Bed of
Roses_. I placed it with Messrs Alston Rivers, Ltd., whose standard of
respectability was beyond attachment. They read the book without, so far
as I remember, any ill effects; at least I saw no signs of corruption in
the managing director and the secretary; the maidenly reserve of the
lady shorthand-typist seemed unblemished. But some horrid internal
convulsion must have suddenly occurred in the firm; they must have lost
their nerve; or perhaps my corrupting influence was gradual and
progressive; at any rate, they suddenly sent the book to their legal
adviser, who wired back that it would almost certainly be prosecuted. So
the contract was not signed, and if I had not, in those days, been an
enthusiastic young man who longed to be prosecuted, I might never have
published the book at all; the moral pressure might have been enough to
keep it down. But I offered it to many publishers, all of whom rejected
it, at the same time asking whether some milder spring might not be
struck from the rock of my imagination, until I came across Mr Frank
Palmer, who was a brave man. I offered him that book, cropped of about
seventy pages, which I thought so true to life that I realised they must
cause offence. He accepted it. Those were beautiful times, and I knew an
exquisite day when I decided to chance the prosecution. I remember the
bang of the MS. as it dropped into the post box; garbling an old song, I
thought: 'Good-bye, good-bye, ye lovely young girls, we're off to Botany
Bay.'
The police treated me very scurvily; they took no notice at all. The
book was banned by all libraries owing to its alleged hectic qualities,
and in due course achieved a moderate measure of scandalous success. I
tell this story to show that had I been a sweet and shrinking soul, that
if Mr Palmer had not shared in my audacity, the book would not have been
published. We should not have been stopped, but we should have been
frightened off, and this, I say, is the force that keeps down sincere
novels, deep down in the muddy depths of their authors' imagination.
Now and then a publisher dares, and dares too far. Such is the case of
_The Rainbow_, by Mr D. H. Lawrence, where the usual methods of Puritan
terrorism were applied, where the publisher was taken into court, and
made to eat humble pie, knowing that if he refused he must drink
hemlock. Certainly _The Rainbow_ was a bad book, for it was an
ill-written book, a book of hatred and desire ... but many of us are
people of hatred and desire, and I submit that there is no freedom when
a minority of one in a nation of fifty millions is hampered in the
expression of his feelings. More than one opinion has been held by one
man and is now the belief of all the world. The beliefs of to-morrow
will be slain if we suppress to-day the opinion of one. I would
surrender all the rupees and virgins of Bengal for the sake of the atom
of truth which may, in another age, build up immortal understanding in
the heart of man.
All this has frightened publishers, so that they will now take no risks,
and even the shy sincerity of English writers is turned away. The public
subserve the Puritans, little mean people whom Mr Wells ideally
nicknamed 'Key-hole,' or 'Snuffles,' little people who form 'watch
committees' or 'vigilance societies'; who easily discover the obscene
because it hangs like a film before their eyes, little people who keep
the window shut. The police must obey, or be called corrupt; the courts
are ready to apply the law severely rather than leniently, for who shall
play devil's advocate at the Old Bailey? No wonder the publishers are
frightened; the combination of their timidity, of truculent Puritanism
and of a reluctantly vigilant police makes it almost impossible to
_publish_ a sincere work.
One result is that we are deprived of translations of foreign novels,
some of which are of the first rank. There is _Le Journal d'une Femme de
Chambre_; there is _Aphrodite_, the work of M. Pierre Louys, who is an
artist in his way; there is Mr Boylesve's delicate, inwrought _La Lecon
d'Amour dans un Parc_; there is the Parisian mischief of M. Prevost's
_Lettres de Femmes_, the elegance of M. Henri de Regnier. _Sanin_ got
through, how I do not know; I have not read the translation, and it may
very well be that it escaped only after the translator had thickly
coated it with the soapsuds of English virtue.
Small as their chances may be it is a pity that the publishers do not
adventure. It is true that Mr Vizetelly went to jail for publishing
translations of Zola's novels, but when we are told by Mr George Moore
that Mr W. T. Stead confided to him that the Vigilance Society
considered the prosecution of _Madame Bovary_, it seems necessary again
to test the law. For you will observe that in all the cases quoted the
publisher has not allowed himself to be committed for trial; he has
chosen the prudent and humble course of apologising and withdrawing the
book, and one wonders what would happen if just once, supported by a
common fund, a publisher were to face the Puritans, let the case go for
trial, test the law. One wonders what the result might not be in the
hands of, for instance, Sir John Simon. He might win a glorious victory
for English letters; he might do away with much of the muckraking which
is keeping English letters in subjection because nobody dares drag it
out for public exposure and combat. Until that happens Puritan influence
is more potent than a score of convictions, for no publisher knows what
he may do and what he may not; prosecution is as effective in threat as
in action, and I hope that if ever this struggle comes it will be over
some book of mine.
Let it be clear that no blame attaches to the publisher; he does not
trade under the name 'Galahad & Co.'; he knows that even defeated
Puritans would attempt to avenge their downfall, and malignantly pursue
all the works he issued in every municipal library. But still it is a
pity that no publisher will face them; half a dozen of our best known
publishers are knights: perhaps one day one of them will put on his
armour.
This secret terrorism is a national calamity, for it procures the
sterilisation of the English novel. It was always so, for there is not
complete sincerity in _Tom Jones_, or in _A Mummer's Wife_, even as the
word sincerity is understood in England, and there is little nowadays.
We have to-day a certain number of fairly courageous novelists whose
works are alluded to in other chapters, but they are not completely
sincere. If they were they would not be concerned with censorships; they
would not be published at all. I do not suggest that they wish to be
insincere, but they cannot help it. Their insincerity, I suspect, as
exemplified by the avoidance of certain details, arises from the
necessity of that avoidance; it arises also from the habit of
concealment and evasion which a stupefied public, led by a neurotic
faction, has imposed upon them.
Our novelists openly discuss every feature of social life, politics,
religion, but they cast over sex a thick veil of ellipse and metaphor.
Thus Mr Onions suggests, but dares not name, the disease a character
contracts; Mr Lawrence leaves in some doubt the actual deeds of his
_Trespasser_, while 'H. H. Richardson' leaves to our conjectures the
habits of Schilsky. (So do I, you see; if I were to say exactly what I
mean it would never do.)
It may be said that all this is not insincerity, and that there is no
need to dwell upon what the respectable call the unwholesome, the
unhealthy, the unnecessary, but I think we must accept that the
bowdlerising to which a novelist subjects his own work results in
lopsidedness. If a novelist were to develop his characters evenly the
three hundred page novel might extend to five hundred; the additional
two hundred pages would be made up entirely of the sex preoccupations
of the characters, their adventures and attempts at satisfaction. There
would be as many scenes in the bedroom as in the drawing-room, probably
more, given that human beings spend more time in the former than in the
latter apartment. There would be abundant detail, detail that would
bring out an intimacy of contact, a completeness of mutual understanding
which does not generally come about when characters meet at breakfast or
on the golf course. The additional pages would offer pictures of the sex
side of the characters, and thus would compel them to come alive; at
present they often fail to come alive because they develop only on, say,
five sides out of six.
No character in a modern English novel has been fully developed.
Sometimes, as in the case of Mendel, of Jude the Obscure, of Mark
Lennan, of Gyp Fioersen, one has the impression that they are fully
developed because the book mainly describes their sex adventures, but
one could write a thousand pages about sex adventures and have done
nothing but produce sentimental atmosphere. A hundred kisses do not make
one kiss, and there is more truth in one page of _Madame Bovary_, than
in the shackled works of Mr Hardy. It is not his fault, it is a case of
... if England but knew ... and, therefore, if Hardy but could. Our
literary characters are lopsided because their ordinary traits are fully
portrayed, analysed with extraordinary minuteness, while their sex life
is cloaked, minimised, or left out. Therefore, as the ordinary man does
indulge his sexual proclivities, as a large proportion of his thoughts
run on sex, if he is a live man, the characters in modern novels are
false. They are megacephalous and emasculate. If their religious views,
their political opinions, their sporting tastes were whittled down as
cruelly as their sexual tendencies, then the characters would become
balanced; they would be dwarfs, but they would be true; if all the
characteristics of men were as faintly suggested in them as their sexual
traits, the persons that figure in novels would simulate reality.
They would not be reality, but they would be less untrue than they are
to-day. This, however, is merely theory, for it is impossible to apply
to the novel the paradox that insincerity in everything being better
than insincerity in one thing it is desirable to be insincere
throughout. The paradox cannot be applied, because then a novel of ideas
could not be written; shrouded religious doubt, shy socialism, suggested
anarchism, would reduce the length by nine tenths, make of the novel a
short story. It would be perfectly balanced and perfectly insincere;
aesthetically sound, it would satisfy nobody. We should be compelled to
pad it out with murder, theft, and arson, which, as everybody knows, are
perfectly moral things to write about.
It is a cruel position for the English novel. The novelist may discuss
anything but the main pre-occupation of life. If he describes the City
clerk he may dilate upon City swindles, but he must select warily from
among the City clerk's loves. The novelist knows these loves, records
them in his mind, speaks of them freely, but he does not write them
down. If he did, his publisher would go to jail. For this reason there
is no completely sincere writing. The novelist is put into the witness
box, but he is not sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth; he is sworn to tell the truth, but not the whole truth.
He is not perjured, but he is muzzled.
Obviously this is an unhealthy state, for the spirit of a people is in
its books, and I suspect that it does a people no good if its
preoccupation find no outlet; it develops inhibitions, while its Puritan
masters develop phobias. The cloaking of the truth makes neither modesty
nor mock modesty; it makes impurity. There is no market for pornography,
for pornography makes no converts who were not already converted. I
believe that the purity propaganda creates much of the evil that lives;
I charge advertising reformers with minds full of hate, bishops full of
wind, and bourgeois full of fear, with having exercised through the
pulpit and the platform a more stimulating effect upon youth, and with
having given it more unhealthy information about white slavery, secret
cinemas, and disorderly houses than it could ever have gained from all
the books that were ever printed in Amsterdam. I once went to a meeting
for men only, and came out with two entirely new brands of vice; a
bishop held up to me the luridities of secret cinemas, and did
everything for me except to give me the address. But he filled my mind
with cinemas. One could multiply these instances indefinitely. I do not
think that we should cover things up; we had enough of that during the
mid-Victorian period, when respectability was at its height, and when
women, in bodice and bustle, did their best to make respectability
difficult; no, we do not want things covered up, but we do want them
advertised. I believe that as good coin drives out bad the Puritans
would find a greater safety and the world a greater freedom in allowing
good literature to vie with evil; the good would inevitably win; no
immoral literature is good; all bad literature dies. The seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries in England and France produced the vilest
pornography we know. Those centuries also produced Moliere and Fielding.
Well, to-day, you can buy Moliere and Fielding everywhere, but the
pornography of those centuries is dead, and you can find it nowhere
except in a really good West End club.
It may be argued that the English are not, as a nation, interested in
sex, that they do not discuss it and that they do not think about it. If
this were true, then a novelist would be sincere if he devoted nine
tenths of his novel to business and play and no more than a tenth to
sex. But it is not true. The English, particularly English women, speak
a great deal about sex and, as they are certainly shy of the subject,
they must devote to it a great deal of thought which they never put into
words. If anybody doubts this, let him play eavesdropper in a club, a
public house, or an office, listen to men, their views, their stories;
let him especially discover how many 'humorous' tales are based on sex.
And let him discreetly ascertain the topics young women discuss when no
men are present; some, like Elsie Lindtner, are frank enough to tell.
In their private lives the English do not talk of sex as they would like
to, but they do talk, and more openly every day. Yet their sex
preoccupations are not reflected in the novels which purport to reflect
their lives; conversation is over-sexed, the novel is under-sexed,
therefore untrue, therefore insincere. For this there is no immediate
remedy. Neither the Society of Authors, nor a combine of publishers, nor
a 'Liberty Library' can shake the combination of fears which actuates
persecution. The law should certainly be tested, just as it was tested
in France by the prosecution of Flaubert in 1857, but we know perfectly
well that even a victory for sincerity would do no more than carry us a
little nearer to our goal. The law is a trifle compared with public
feeling, and public feeling is a trifle beside the emotions the public
is told it ought to feel. We had best reconcile ourselves to the
inevitable, admit that we cannot be sincere because the police dare not
allow it, and acquit the libraries of this one sin, that they killed in
English literature a sincerity which was not there.