A good many years ago I had a painful experience. I was
discovered by my house-master reading in bed at the unauthorized
hour of midnight. Smith minor in the next bed (we shared a
candle) was also reading. We were both discovered. But the most
annoying part of the business, as it seemed to me then, was that
Smith minor was discovered reading Alton Locke, and that I was
discovered reading Marooned Among Cannibals. If only our house-
master had come in the night before! Then he would have found me
reading Alton Locke. Just for a moment it occurred to me to tell
him this, but after a little reflection I decided that it would
be unwise. He might have misunderstood the bearings of the
revelation.
There is hardly one of us who is proof against this sort of
intellectual snobbery. A detective story may have been a very
good friend to us, but we don't want to drag it into the
conversation; we prefer a casual reference to The Egoist, with
which we have perhaps only a bowing acquaintance; a reference
which leaves the impression that we are inseparable companions,
or at any rate inseparable until such day when we gather from our
betters that there are heights even beyond The Egoist. Dead or
alive, we would sooner be found with a copy of Marcus Aurelius
than with a copy of Marie Corelli. I used to know a man who
carried always with him a Russian novel in the original; not
because he read Russian, but because a day might come when, as
the result of some accident, the "pockets of the deceased" would
be exposed in the public Press. As he said, you never know; but
the only accident which happened to him was to be stranded for
twelve hours one August at a wayside station in the Highlands.
After this he maintained that the Russians were overrated.
I should like to pretend that I myself have grown out of these
snobbish ways by this time, but I am doubtful if it would be
true. It happened to me not so long ago to be travelling in
company of which I was very much ashamed; and to be ashamed of
one's company is to be a snob. At this period I was trying to
amuse myself (and, if it might be so, other people) by writing a
burlesque story in the manner of an imaginary collaboration by
Sir Hall Caine and Mrs. Florence Barclay. In order to do this I
had to study the works of these famous authors, and for many
week-ends in succession I might have been seen travelling to, or
returning from, the country with a couple of their books under my
arm. To keep one book beneath the arm is comparatively easy; to
keep two is much more difficult. Many was the time, while waiting
for my train to come in, that one of those books slipped from me.
Indeed, there is hardly a junction in the railway system of the
southern counties at which I have not dropped on some Saturday or
other a Caine or a Barclay; to have it restored to me a moment
later by a courteous fellow-passenger--courteous, but with a
smile of gentle pity in his eye as he glimpsed the author's name.
"Thanks very much," I would stammer, blushing guiltily, and
perhaps I would babble about a sick friend to whom I was taking
them, or that I was running out of paper-weights. But he never
believed me. He knew that he would have said something like that
himself.
Nothing is easier than to assume that other people share one's
weaknesses. No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the
ground that it was human nature; possibly, indeed, he wrote an
essay like this, in which he speculated mildly as to the reasons
which made stabbing so attractive to us all. So I realize that I
may be doing you an injustice in suggesting that you who read may
also have your little snobberies. But I confess that I should
like to cross-examine you. If in conversation with you, on the
subject (let us say) of heredity, a subject to which you had
devoted a good deal of study, I took it for granted that you had
read Ommany's Approximations, would you make it quite clear to me
that you had not read it? Or would you let me carry on the
discussion on the assumption that you knew it well; would you,
even, in answer to a direct question, say shamefacedly that
though you had not--er--actually read it, you--er--knew about it,
of course, and had--er--read extracts from it? Somehow I think
that I could lead you on to this; perhaps even make you say that
you had actually ordered it from your library, before I told you
the horrid truth that Ommany's Approximations was an invention of
my own.
It is absurd that we (I say "we," for I include you now) should
behave like this, for there is no book over which we need be
ashamed, either to have read it or not to have read it. Let us,
therefore, be frank. In order to remove the unfortunate
impression of myself which I have given you, I will confess that
I have only read three of Scott's novels, and begun, but never
finished, two of Henry James'. I will also confess --and here I
am by way of restoring that unfortunate impression--that I do
quite well in Scottish and Jacobean circles on those five books.
For, if a question arises as to which is Scott's masterpiece, it
is easy for me to suggest one of my three, with the air of one
who has chosen it, not over two others, but over twenty. Perhaps
one of my three is the acknowledged masterpiece; I do not know.
If it is, then, of course, all is well. But if it is not, then I
must appear rather a clever fellow for having rejected the
obvious. With regard to Henry James, my position is not quite so
secure; but at least I have good reason for feeling that the two
novels which I was unable to finish cannot be his best, and with
a little tact I can appear to be defending this opinion hotly
against some imaginary authority who has declared in favour of
them. One might have read the collected works of both authors,
yet make less of an impression.
Indeed, sometimes I feel that I have read their collected works,
and Ommany's Approximations, and many other books with which you
would be only too glad to assume familiarity. For in giving
others the impression that I am on terms with these masterpieces,
I have but handed on an impression which has gradually formed
itself in my own mind. So I take no advantage of them; and if it
appears afterwards that we have been deceived together, I shall
be at least as surprised and indignant about it as they.