Part 1

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

_A Realistic Novelist_

BY

WILLIAM LYON PHELPS

Lampson Professor of English Literature at Yale

WITH FRONTISPIECE

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1919

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.

TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

NOTABLE FOR SCHOLARS AND TEACHERS AND TWO CREATIVE ARTISTS

THE NOVELIST ROBERT HERRICK THE POET WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

PREFACE

The original form of this book was a lecture on the William Vaughn Moody foundation at the University of Chicago, delivered on the sixth of February, 1918. A portion of it was subsequently printed in the _North American Review_. It now appears considerably revised and enlarged.

W. L. P.

_Yale University, Tuesday, 21 May, 1918._

ARCHIBALD MARSHALL

On a mellow day in the early autumn of the year 1900, I sat on an old wooden bench in the open air with an English gentleman, and listened to his conversation with a mixture of curiosity and reverence. The place was one of the fairest counties of England, the town on the other side of a screen of trees was Dorchester, and my seat-mate was Thomas Hardy. I remember his saying without any additional emphasis than the weight of the words, that the basis of every novel should be a story. In considering this remark, which came, not from a doctrinaire, but from a master of long and triumphant experience, I could not help thinking that what seems axiomatic is often belied by a majority of instances. Thus, we church-members would agree that religion must take the first place in our lives; yet a disinterested observer, who should begin at the other end of the proposition and examine our lives merely to discover what actually did take the first place therein, might conceivably miss the element of religion altogether. In the same way, while it would theoretically seem that every novel must be a story, an honest critic who should examine the total product of prose fiction for any given year in the twentieth century, might, in a large number of cases, easily fail to find any story at all.

As we look back over the history of the English novel, it would appear that every permanent work of fiction has been a great story. _Robinson Crusoe_, _Clarissa_, _Tom Jones_, _Humphry Clinker_, _The Bride of Lammermoor_, _Pride and Prejudice_, _Esmond_, _David Copperfield_, _The Mill on the Floss_, _Richard Feverel_, _The Return of the Native_, _Treasure Island_, _The Last of the Mohicans_, _The Scarlet Letter_, _Huckleberry Finn_, although they represent various shades of realism and romanticism, have all been primarily stories, in which we follow the fortunes of the chief actors with steady interest. These books owe their supremacy in fiction--at least, most of them do--to a combination of narrative, character, and style; every one of them, if given in colloquial paraphrase to a group of men around a camp-fire, would be rewarded with attention.

Sometimes the very thing that gives a drama or a novel immediate currency makes it smell of mortality; by taking advantage of some hotly-discussed social question, general interest is awakened; but when the question is obsolete, what becomes of the work of art? I shall not venture to make a prediction; but I think it is at least possible that some of the earlier plays of Ibsen, like _The Pretenders_, may outlast some of the later ones, like _Ghosts_; the later ones blaze with the flames of public debate, the earlier reflect the light of the stars.

Of all forms of literature, the novel has suffered most by its desertion of art for propaganda. It has been debased by its popularity. It lends itself so easily as a channel for political, social or religious oratory. Every theorist uses it as a megaphone. Although novels are as common as grasshoppers, good stories are scarce. Now this desertion of art for propaganda is founded on the fallacy that a work of pure fiction cannot stand or ought not to stand by itself, but should lean on politics, social reform, science, or theology for support. We do not insist on a thesis in sculpture or music or painting or poetry. There have been, indeed, many attempts to turn Pegasus into a cart-horse; and unfortunately the attempt is almost invariably successful.

I prefer novels that express the opinions of the characters in the story to those that express the opinions of the author. I do not mean that all novels ought to be impersonal; such a result, even when most ardently desired by the novelist, is impossible of achievement. The work of every true artist reflects his personality, and is, in a sense, subjective. Even the coldest novels betray their makers' sympathies, and the standpoint from which they regard the world. But there is a difference between having ideas and arguing a case. Women who have ideas are always more interesting than those who have only opinions.

Why is it that so many novelists write their best books early in their careers? Is it not sometimes because the original impelling artistic impulse becomes dulled in contact with society, and thoughts take the place of thought? The thorns of this world spring up and choke them. It is by no accident that _The Mill on the Floss_ is a greater novel than _Daniel Deronda_.

The most enduring novels come from the silent depths in a writer's soul, not from the turbulent shallows. To live deeply is easier in a country where deep living has been done for centuries than in a country whose human history is brief. If we should really feel chagrined by America's native contribution to literature in comparison with that of Europe, we might justifiably console ourselves by comparing America with Australia. Surely one reason why the British today write novels rather better than the Americans, is because their roots go down deeper into the rich soil of the past. Men of genius are scarce in any locality, and I am not at this moment thinking of them; but I am constantly surprised at the large number of contemporary novels produced in Great Britain whose literary style bears the unmistakable stamp of distinction. There are leaders, whose names are known everywhere; there are men and women who might conceivably be leaders if they lived out of Europe. The best reason why many admirable twentieth century works of prose fiction in England fail to attract general attention is because the level of excellence is so high.

II

H. G. Wells is not the hero of this book. I am holding my roses for a figure that has not yet appeared upon my little stage. But the career of Mr. Wells, whose novels have almost every quality except charm, is interesting to contemplate. That he is a born novelist was clear to me so early as the year 1895, when one of his best stories appeared--_The Wheels of Chance_. Not long after came the novels of science and socialism that carried his name around the world; he was discussed in the salons of Paris and in the prisons of Siberia. His books were all busy, noisy, talkative, restless; they reflected in their almost truculent mental aggressiveness the mass of undigested and indigestible quasi-scientific fodder that perhaps disturbs more than it nourishes the twentieth century stomach; they made many readers fondly believe they were living the intellectual life. I mistakenly supposed he would keep up this squirrel-cage activity to the end of his days; for I mistakenly supposed in all this clatter he was incapable of hearing the voice of the spirit. I used to think that if all the world suddenly became religious except one man, that man would be H. G. Wells.

The war, which diverted the energies of so many quiet thinkers to matters of immediate and practical efficiency, produced a rather different effect upon this interesting man. He began to regard things that are temporal in relation to those of eternal import. He became converted--I have no hesitation in using the good old word--and while I can see no evidence of conviction of sin, for humility is not his most salient characteristic, he did come to believe and believes now, that religion ought to be the motive power of man. What direction his ideas may take in the future I cannot divine; but I am thankful for his conversion, if only for the reason that it inspired him to produce a masterpiece, _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_. This novel is not only far and away his best book, it is the ablest work of fiction about the war that I have read. But it owes its eminence not to its accurate reporting of the course of social history during the war, for after all, the much admired hockey-game is not much higher than major journalism, but rather to the profound sense of spiritual values which is the core of the book.

I regard it as unfortunate that Mr. Wells felt it necessary to follow up the triumph of this tale with a treatise on theology called _God the Invisible King_, and with a propagandist novel, called _The Soul of a Bishop_. For the last-named book illustrates all the faults of its species, as well as the cardinal sin against art. _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_ is religious; _The Soul of a Bishop_ is sectarian. And _God the Invisible King_, while it should be read with sympathy for its author's sincerity and newly-found idealism, has all the arrogance and cock-sureness of an old-fashioned theologian without the preliminary years of devoted learning that gave the old-fashioned one some right to a hearing, provided of course he could induce any one to listen to him. No orthodox evangelist has ever been more sure of God than Mr. Wells. The novel was properly named _Mr. Britling Sees It Through_; and we might with equal propriety name the treatise, _Mr. Britling Sees Through It_.

Strange and unfortunate that Mr. Wells should think that the religious element in Mr. Britling needed additional emphasis. A work of art founded on eternal verities will accomplish more for the cause of religion than any tract. Solely from the moral point of view, _Anna Karenina_ is a more impressive book than most of its author's subsequent exhortations.

_The Soul of a Bishop_ is not a realistic novel, for there is no real character in it. It is already on its way to limbo, along with _Robert Elsmere_ and _The Inside of the Cup_. But it is an excellent illustration of the fate that awaits an artist when he sacrifices the truth of art for the enforcement of personal opinion. There was a time when the excitement over the question of trades-unions produced by _Put Yourself in His Place_ was at fever heat; but that novel today is almost forgotten, while _The Cloister and the Hearth_ will be read by generation after generation, simply because it is a great story.

III

In order to illustrate what I mean by a realistic novelist whose happiest effects are gained by writing good stories with real characters, I know of no better choice among contemporaries than Archibald Marshall. He is an artist of such dignity and refinement that only twice in his career has he written a novel that had for its main purpose something other than truth to life; in each of these two attempts the result was a failure.

I know how difficult it is to "recommend" novels to hungry readers, for I have written prescriptions to alleviate many kinds of mental trouble, yes, and physical ailments too; but how can I be sure that the remedy will in every "case" be effective? I know that _Treasure Island_ cured me of an attack of tonsillitis and that _Queed_ cured me of acute indigestion; a United States naval officer informed me that he recovered from jaundice simply by reading _Pride and Prejudice_. These are facts; but what assurance have I that other sufferers can try these prescriptions with reasonable hope? Yet I have no hesitancy in recommending Archibald Marshall to any group of men or women or to any individual of mature growth. One scholar of sixty years of age told me that these novels had given him a quite new zest in life; and I myself, who came upon them on one of the luckiest days of my existence, confidently affirm the same judgment. Of the numerous persons that I have induced to read these books, I have met with only one sceptic; this was a shrewd, sharp-minded woman of eighty, who declared with a hearty laugh that she found them insupportably tame. I understand this hostility, for when girls reach the age of eighty, they demand excitement.

Those who are familiar with Mr. Marshall's work and life will easily discover therein echoes of his own experience. He is an Englishman by birth and descent, familiar with both town and country. He was born on the sixth of September, 1866, and received in his home life and preliminary training plenty of material which appeared later in the novels. His father came from the city, like the father in _Abington Abbey_; he himself was graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, like the son of _Peter Binney_; it was intended but not destined that he should follow his father's business career, and he worked in a city office like the son of Armitage Brown; he went to Australia like the hero's sister in _Many Junes_; he made three visits to America, but fortunately has not yet written an American novel; he studied theology with the intention of becoming a clergyman in the Church of England, like so many young men in his stories; in despair at finding a publisher for his work, he became a publisher himself, and issued his second novel, _The House of Merrilees_, which had as much success as it deserved; he tried journalism before and during the war; he lived in two small Sussex towns with literary associations, Winchelsea and Rye, in the latter from 1908 to 1913; then until 1917 his home was in Switzerland; he has now gone back to the scene of his university days, Cambridge.

In 1902 he was married and lived for some time in Beaulieu (pronounced Bewly) in the New Forest, faithfully portrayed in _Exton Manor_. He spent three happy years there planning and making a garden, like the young man in _The Old Order Changeth_. Although his novels are filled with hunting and shooting, he is not much of a sportsman himself, being content only to observe. He loves the atmosphere of sport rather than sport. His favourite recreations are walking, reading, painting, and piano-playing, and the outdoor flavour of his books may in part be accounted for by the fact that much of his writing is done in the open air.

Like many another successful man of letters, his first step was a false start; for in 1899 he produced a novel called _Peter Binney, Undergraduate_, which has never been republished in America, and perhaps never will be. This is a topsy-turvy book, where an ignorant father insists on entering Cambridge with his son; and after many weary months of coaching, succeeds in getting his name on the books. The son is a steady-headed, unassuming boy, immensely popular with his mates; the father, determined to recapture his lost youth, disgraces his son and the college by riotous living, and is finally expelled. The only good things in the book are the excellent pictures of May Week and some snap-shots at college customs; but the object of the author is so evident and he has twisted reality so harshly in order to accomplish it, that we have merely a work of distortion.

For six years our novelist remained silent; and he never returned to the method of reversed dynamics until the year 1915, when he published _Upsidonia_, another failure. Once again his purpose is all too clear; possibly irritated by the exaltation of slum stories and the depreciation of the characters of the well-to-do often insisted upon in such works, he wrote a satire in the manner of _Erewhon_, and called it a novel. Here poverty and dirt are regarded as the highest virtues, and the possession of wealth looked upon as the sure and swift road to social ostracism. There is not a gleam of the author's true skill in this book, mainly because he is so bent on arguing his case that exaggeration triumphs rather too grossly over verisimilitude. He is, of course, trying to write nonsense; a mark that some authors have hit with deliberate aim, while perhaps more have attained the same result with less conscious intention. Now Mr. Marshall cannot write nonsense even when he tries; and failure in such an effort is particularly depressing. He is at his best when his art is restrained and delicate; in _Upsidonia_ he drops the engraving-tool and wields a meat-axe. Let us do with _Peter Binney_ and with _Upsidonia_ what every other reader has done; let us try to forget them, remembering only that two failures in fifteen books is not a high proportion.

Of the remaining thirteen novels, two attained only a partial success; and the reason is interesting. These two are _The House of Merrilees_ and _Many Junes_ (1908). The former was written in 1901 but publishers would none of it, and it did not wear a print dress until 1905. Meanwhile the author was trying his hand at short stories, for which his method of work is not particularly fitted, his skill being in the development of character rather than in the manufacture of incident. He did, however, publish a collection of these tales in one volume, called _The Terrors_, which appeared in 1913, their previous separate publication covering a period of sixteen years. They are amazingly unequal in value; some are excellent, and others trivial. This volume is out of print, and whether any of the contents may be rescued from oblivion is at present problematical. It is interesting, however, that he, at the outset of his career, supposed that invention, rather than observation, was his trump card. The realism of _The House of Merrilees_ is mixed with melodrama and mystery; these are, in the work of a dignified artist, dangerous allies, greater liabilities than assets. In a personal letter he confesses that this artificial plot hampered him; but he goes on to say, "the range of scene and character in that book is something that I have never been able to catch since." He has since--with only one relapse--happily forsaken artificially constructed mysteries for the deepest mystery of all--the human heart. In _Many Junes_, a story that will be reprinted in America in 1919, we have pictures of English country life of surpassing loveliness; we have an episode as warm and as fleeting as June itself; we have a faithful analysis of the soul of a strange and solitary man, damned from his birth by lack of decision. But the crisis in the tale is brought about by an accident so improbable that the reader refuses to believe it. The moment our author forsakes reality he is lost; it is as necessary for him to keep the truth as it was for Samson to keep his hair. Furthermore, this is the only one of Mr. Marshall's books that has a tragic close--and his art cannot flourish in tragedy, any more than a native of the tropics can live in Lapland. The bleak air of lost illusion and frustrated hope, in which the foremost living novelist, appropriately named, finds his soul's best climate, is not favourable to Archibald Marshall.

The "relapse" mentioned in the preceding paragraph occurred in the year 1912, when he published a long and wildly exciting novel, called _The Mystery of Redmarsh Farm_. This has all the marks of a "best-seller" and went through several editions in England, though it has not yet been reprinted in America. I regard the writing of this book as the most dangerous moment in Mr. Marshall's career, for its immediate commercial success might easily have tempted him to continue in the same vein, and if he had, he would have sunk to the level of a popular entertainer, and lost his position among British novelists of the past and present. Curiously enough, it came between two of his best works in the Clinton series, _The Eldest Son_ (1911) and _The Honour of the Clintons_ (1913). Maybe the chilling reception given to his finest stories drove him to a cheaper style of composition. Maybe his long second visit to Australia, where he saw and shared experiences quite unlike his English environment, made him try his hand at mystery and crime. In 1911 he had published _Sunny Australia_, the result of a sojourn on that continent, whither he had gone as special commissioner for the _Daily Mail_. There is a good deal of superficial cleverness in _The Mystery of Redmarsh Farm_; its plot is elaborate, with a flavour of _Lohengrin_; the beautiful lonely maiden's young brother is stolen by a villain and rescued by a young hero who is appropriately named Knightly; a misunderstanding separates the girl and her lover, who sails away to Australia. Unlike Lohengrin, however, he returns, and all is well. There is a conventional detective, and a murder trial and a shipwreck and a recognition scene--I kept looking back to the title page to see if the author really was Archibald Marshall. It is as though Joseph Conrad should write like Marie Corelli. Yet although some of the characters are unreal and the plot artificial and the villain theatrical, the environment, whether in England or in Australia, is as accurately painted as in Mr. Marshall's best stories. He will not write of places that he has not seen. When the gypsies are found, they are found in the New Forest; and any one who reads this yarn immediately after _Sunny Australia_, will see that these distant scenes are correctly described.

IV

It was in the year 1906, and in the novel _Richard Baldock_, that he revealed his power. This book, which will make its first American appearance in the autumn of 1918, contains a story so absorbing that it is only in the retrospect that one realizes the vitality of its characters and the delicacy of its art. There are no heroes and no villains. Every person has the taint that we all inherited from Adam, and every person has some reflection of the grace of God. There is no one who does not say something foolish or ill-considered; and there is no one who does not say something wise. In other words there are no types, like "heavies," "juveniles," and "ingenues." As is the case in nearly all the novels by its author, we are constantly revising our opinions of the characters; and we revise them, not because the characters are untrue, but because we learn to know them better. Human nature is consistent only in its inconsistency. It is forever fluid and dynamic; and although no individual has ever understood another, and least of all himself, increasing knowledge helps to make us certain of our uncertainty. No man will play the part his friends have written for him. One reason why Shakespeare was a first-rate and Jonson a second-rate dramatist is because Jonson created humours and Shakespeare created individuals. Among all Shakespeare's personages, Hamlet is the most interesting to readers and the most baffling to commentators; because the latter try to adjust him to a theory of madness, weak will, or what not. Is not the fact that he has never been understood by any one and never will be, the strongest proof of his reality? Some think he lacked backbone; others insist he was all backbone; some think he was mad; others that he only pretended to be mad; while America's greatest Shakespearean scholar said he was neither mad nor pretended to be. A young gentleman of Hamlet's copious temperament, placed as he was amid natural and supernatural forces, might easily at times seem to illustrate any one of the above appraisals. Indeed I suppose the sanest and most resolute among us seem at times to lack either resolution or sanity or both.

The more complex a character, the less dependable he is. And everybody has some complexity. Even quiet Horatio, beloved of Hamlet for his steady self-control, tried to commit suicide.