"Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!". . . Useless
jugglers, frivolous players on the lute! Must we so describe ourselves,
we, the producers, season by season, of so many hundreds of "remarkable"
works of fiction?--for though, when we take up the remarkable works of
our fellows, we "really cannot read them!" the Press and the
advertisements of our publishers tell us that they are "remarkable."
A story goes that once in the twilight undergrowth of a forest of
nut-bearing trees a number of little purblind creatures wandered, singing
for nuts. On some of these purblind creatures the nuts fell heavy and
full, extremely indigestible, and were quickly swallowed; on others they
fell light, and contained nothing, because the kernel had already been
eaten up above, and these light and kernel-less nuts were accompanied by
sibilations or laughter. On others again no nuts at all, empty or full,
came down. But nuts or no nuts, full nuts or empty nuts, the purblind
creatures below went on wandering and singing. A traveller one day
stopped one of these creatures whose voice was peculiarly disagreeable,
and asked "Why do you sing like this? Is it for pleasure that you do it,
or for pain? What do you get out of it? Is it for the sake of those up
there? Is it for your own sake--for the sake of your family--for whose
sake? Do you think your songs worth listening to? Answer!"
The creature scratched itself, and sang the louder.
"Ah! Cacoethes! I pity, but do not blame you," said the traveller.
He left the creature, and presently came to another which sang a squeaky
treble song. It wandered round in a ring under a grove of stunted trees,
and the traveller noticed that it never went out of that grove.
"Is it really necessary," he said, "for you to express yourself thus?"
And as he spoke showers of tiny hard nuts came down on the little
creature, who ate them greedily. The traveller opened one; it was
extremely small and tasted of dry rot.
"Why, at all events," he said, "need you stay under these trees? the nuts
are not good here."
But for answer the little creature ran round and round, and round and
round.
"I suppose," said the traveller, "small bad nuts are better than no
bread; if you went out of this grove you would starve?"
The purblind little creature shrieked. The traveller took the sound for
affirmation, and passed on. He came to a third little creature who,
under a tall tree, was singing very loudly indeed, while all around was a
great silence, broken only by sounds like the snuffling of small noses.
The creature stopped singing as the traveller came up, and at once a
storm of huge nuts came down; the traveller found them sweetish and very
oily.
"Why," he said to the creature, "did you sing so loud? You cannot eat
all these nuts. You really do sing louder than seems necessary; come,
answer me!"
But the purblind little creature began to sing again at the top of its
voice, and the noise of the snuffling of small noses became so great that
the traveller hastened away. He passed many other purblind little
creatures in the twilight of this forest, till at last he came to one
that looked even blinder than the rest, but whose song was sweet and low
and clear, breaking a perfect stillness; and the traveller sat down to
listen. For a long time he listened to that song without noticing that
not a nut was falling. But suddenly he heard a faint rustle and three
little oval nuts lay on the ground.
The traveller cracked one of them. It was of delicate flavour. He
looked at the little creature standing with its face raised, and said:
"Tell me, little blind creature, whose song is so charming, where did you
learn to sing?"
The little creature turned its head a trifle to one side as though
listening for the fall of nuts.
"Ah, indeed!" said the traveller: "You, whose voice is so clear, is this
all you get to eat?"
The little blind creature smiled . . . .
It is a twilight forest in which we writers of fiction wander, and once
in a way, though all this has been said before, we may as well remind
ourselves and others why the light is so dim; why there is so much bad
and false fiction; why the demand for it is so great. Living in a world
where demand creates supply, we writers of fiction furnish the exception
to this rule. For, consider how, as a class, we come into existence.
Unlike the followers of any other occupation, nothing whatever compels
any one of us to serve an apprenticeship. We go to no school, have to
pass no examination, attain no standard, receive no diploma. We need not
study that which should be studied; we are at liberty to flood our minds
with all that should not be studied. Like mushrooms, in a single sight
we spring up--a pen in our hands, very little in our brains, and
who-knows-what in our hearts!
Few of us sit down in cold blood to write our first stories; we have
something in us that we feel we must express. This is the beginning of
the vicious circle. Our first books often have some thing in them. We
are sincere in trying to express that something. It is true we cannot
express it, not having learnt how, but its ghost haunts the pages the
ghost of real experience and real life--just enough to attract the
untrained intelligence, just enough to make a generous Press remark:
"This shows promise." We have tasted blood, we pant for more. Those of
us who had a carking occupation hasten to throw it aside, those who had
no occupation have now found one; some few of us keep both the old
occupation and the new. Whichever of these courses we pursue, the hurry
with which we pursue it undoes us. For, often we have only that one book
in us, which we did not know how to write, and having expressed that
which we have felt, we are driven in our second, our third, our fourth,
to warm up variations, like those dressed remains of last night's dinner
which are served for lunch; or to spin from our usually commonplace
imaginations thin extravagances which those who do not try to think for
themselves are ever ready to accept as full of inspiration and vitality.
Anything for a book, we say--anything for a book!
From time immemorial we have acted in this immoral manner, till we have
accustomed the Press and Public to expect it. From time immemorial we
have allowed ourselves to be driven by those powerful drivers, Bread, and
Praise, and cared little for the quality of either. Sensibly, or
insensibly, we tune our songs to earn the nuts of our twilight forest.
We tune them, not to the key of: "Is it good?" but to the key of: "Will
it pay?" and at each tuning the nuts fall fast! It is all so natural.
How can we help it, seeing that we are undisciplined and standardless,
seeing that we started without the backbone that schooling gives? Here
and there among us is a genius, here and there a man of exceptional
stability who trains himself in spite of all the forces working for his
destruction. But those who do not publish until they can express, and do
not express until they have something worth expressing, are so rare that
they can be counted on the fingers of three or perhaps four hands;
mercifully, we all--or nearly all believe ourselves of that company.
It is the fashion to say that the public will have what it wants.
Certainly the Public will have what it wants if what it wants is given to
the Public. If what it now wants were suddenly withdrawn, the Public,
the big Public, would by an obvious natural law take the lowest of what
remained; if that again were withdrawn, it would take the next lowest,
until by degrees it took a relatively good article. The Public, the big
Public, is a mechanical and helpless consumer at the mercy of what is
supplied to it, and this must ever be so. The Public then is not to
blame for the supply of bad, false fiction. The Press is not to blame,
for the Press, like the Public, must take what is set before it; their
Critics, for the most part, like ourselves have been to no school, passed
no test of fitness, received no certificate; they cannot lead us, it is
we who lead them, for without the Critics we could live but without us
the Critics would die. We cannot, therefore, blame the Press. Nor is
the Publisher to blame; for the Publisher will publish what is set before
him. It is true that if he published no books on commission he would
deserve the praise of the State, but it is quite unreasonable for us to
expect him to deserve the praise of the State, since it is we who supply
him with these books and incite him to publish them. We cannot,
therefore, lay the blame on the Publisher.
We must lay the blame where it clearly should be laid, on ourselves. We
ourselves create the demand for bad and false fiction. Very many of us
have private means; for such there is no excuse. Very many of us have
none; for such, once started on this journey of fiction, there is much,
often tragic, excuse--the less reason then for not having trained
ourselves before setting out on our way. There is no getting out of it;
the fault is ours. If we will not put ourselves to school when we are
young; if we must rush into print before we can spell; if we will not
repress our natural desires and walk before we run; if we will not learn
at least what not to do--we shall go on wandering through the forest,
singing our foolish songs.
And since we cannot train ourselves except by writing, let us write, and
burn what we write; then shall we soon stop writing, or produce what we
need not burn!
For, as things are now, without compass, without map, we set out into the
twilight forest of fiction; without path, without track--and we never
emerge.
Yes, with the French writer, we must say:
"Et nous jongleurs inutiles, frivoles joueurs de luth!" . . .
1906.