Chapter 2

_Now while the solemn evening shadows sail,_ _On slowly-waving pinions, down the vale;_ _And fronting the bright west, yon oak entwines_ _Its darkening boughs...._

Which really is rather splendid for a boy. And he could immediately follow that, speaking of a family of swans, with:

_While tender cares and mild domestic loves_ _With furtive watch pursue her as she moves,_ _The female with a meeker charm succeeds...._

Wordsworth richly atoned for his unconscious farcicalness by a multitude of single lines that, in their pregnant sublimity, attend the Wordsworthian like a shadow throughout his life, warning him continually when he is in danger of making a fool of himself. Thus, whenever through mere idleness I begin to waste the irrecoverable moments of eternity, I always think of that masterly phrase (from, I think, the "Prelude," but I will not be sure):

_Unprofitably travelling towards the grave._

This line is a most convenient and effective stone to throw at one's languid friends. Finally let me hail Mr. Nowell Smith as a benefactor.

NOVELISTS AND AGENTS

[_20 June '08_]

A bad publishing season is now drawing to a close, and in the air are rumours of a crisis. Of course the fault is the author's. It goes without saying that the fault is the author's. In the first place, he will insist on producing mediocre novels. (For naturally the author is a novelist; only novelists count when crises loom. Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edward Carpenter, Robert Bridges, Lord Morley--these types have no relation to crises.) It appears that the publishers have been losing money over the six-shilling novel, and that they are not going to stand the loss any longer. It is stated that never in history were novels so atrociously mediocre as they are to-day. And in the second place, the author will insist on employing an Unspeakable Rascal entitled a literary agent, and the poor innocent lamb of a publisher is fleeced to the naked skin by this scoundrel every time the two meet. Already I have heard that one publisher, hitherto accustomed to the services of twenty gardeners at his country house, has been obliged to reduce the horticultural staff to eighteen.

Such is the publishers' explanation of the crisis. I shall keep my own explanation till the crisis is a little more advanced and ready to burst. In the meantime I should like to ask: How _do_ people manage to range over the whole period of the novel's history and definitely decide that novels were never so bad as they are now? I am personally inclined to think that at no time has the average novel been so good as it is to-day. (This view, by the way, is borne out by publishers' own advertisements, which abound in the word "masterpiece" quoted from infallible critics of great masterpieces!) Let any man who disagrees with me dare go to Mudie's and get out a few forgotten novels of thirty years ago and try to read them! Also, I am prepared to offer £50 for the name and address of a literary agent who is capable of getting the better of a publisher. I am widely acquainted with publishers and literary agents, and though I have often met publishers who have got the better of literary agents, I have never met a literary agent who has come out on top of a publisher. Such a literary agent is badly wanted. I have been looking for him for years. I know a number of authors who would join me in enriching that literary agent. The publishers are always talking about him. I seldom go into a publisher's office but that literary agent has just left (gorged with illicit gold). It irritates me that I cannot run across him. If I were a publisher, he would have been in prison ere now. Briefly, the manner in which certain prominent publishers, even clever ones, talk about literary agents is silly.

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Still, I am ready to believe that publishers have lost money over the six-shilling novel. I am acquainted with the details of several instances of such loss. And in every case the loss has been the result of gambling on the part of the publisher. I do not hesitate to say that the terms offered in late years by some publishers to some popular favourites have been grotesquely inflated. Publishers compete among themselves, and then, when the moment comes for paying the gambler's penalty, they complain of having been swindled. Note that the losses of publishers are nearly always on the works of the idols of the crowd. They want the idol's name as an ornament to their lists, and they commit indiscretions in order to get it. Fantastic terms are never offered to the solid, regular, industrious, medium novelist. And it is a surety that fantastic terms are never offered to the beginner. Ask, and learn.

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But though I admit that money has been lost, I do not think the losses have been heavy. After all, no idolized author and no diabolic agent can force a publisher to pay more than he really wants to pay. And no diabolic agent, having once bitten a publisher, can persuade that publisher to hold out his generous hand to be bitten again. These are truisms. Lastly, I am quite sure that, out of books, a great deal more money has been made by publishers than by authors, and that this will always be so. The threatened crisis in publishing has nothing to do with the prices paid to authors, which on the whole are now fairly just (very different from what they were twenty years ago, when authors had to accept whatever was condescendingly offered to them). And if a crisis does come, the people to suffer will happily be those who can best afford to suffer.

THE NOVEL OF THE SEASON

[_11 July '08_]

The publishing season--the bad publishing season--is now practically over, and publishers may go away for their holidays comforted by the fact that they will not begin to lose money again till the autumn. It only remains to be decided which is the novel of the season. Those interested in the question may expect it to be decided at any moment, either in the _British Weekly_ or the _Sphere_. I take up these journals with a thrill of anticipation. For my part, I am determined only to decide which is not the novel of the season. There are several novels which are not the novel of the season. Perhaps the chief of them is Mr. E.C. Booth's "The Cliff End," which counts among sundry successes to the score of Mr. Grant Richards. Everything has been done for it that reviewing can do, and it has sold, and it is an ingenious and giggling work, but not the novel of the season.

The reviews of "The Cliff End," almost unanimously laudatory, show in a bright light our national indifference to composition in art. Some reviewers, while stating that the story itself was a poor one, insisted that Mr. Booth is a born and accomplished story-teller. Story-tellers born and accomplished do not tell poor stories. A poor story is the work of a poor story-teller. And the story of "The Cliff End" is merely absurd. It is worse, if possible, than the story of Mr. Maxwell's "Vivien," which reviewers accepted. It would appear that with certain novels the story doesn't matter! I really believe that composition, the foundation of all arts, including the art of fiction, is utterly unconsidered in England. Or if it is considered, it is painfully misunderstood. I remember how the panjandrums condescendingly pointed out the bad construction of Mr. Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim," one of the most noble examples of fine composition in modern literature, and but slightly disfigured by a detail of clumsy machinery. In "The Cliff End" there is simply no composition that is not clumsy and conventional. All that can be said of it is that you can't read a page, up to about page 200, without grinning. (Unhappily Mr. Booth overestimated his stock of grins, which ran out untimely.) The true art of fiction, however, is not chiefly connected with grinning, or with weeping. It consists, first and mainly, in a beautiful general composition. But in Anglo-Saxon countries any writer who can induce both a grin and a tear on the same page, no matter how insolent his contempt for composition, is sure of that immortality which contemporaries can award.

* * * * *

Another novel that is not the novel of the season is Mr. John Ayscough's "Marotz," about which much has been said. I do not wish to labour this point. "Marotz" is not the novel of the season. I trust that I make myself plain. I shall not pronounce upon Mr. Masefield's "Captain Margaret," because, though it has been splashed all over by trowelfuls of slabby and mortarish praise, it has real merits. Indeed, it has a chance of being the novel of the season. Mr. Masefield is not yet grown up. He is always trying to write "literature," and that is a great mistake. He should study the wisdom of Paul Verlaine:

_Prends l'éloquence et tords-lui son cou._

Take literature and wring its neck. I suppose that Mr. H. de Vere Stacpoole's "The Blue Lagoon" is not likely to be selected as the novel of the season. And yet, possibly, it will be the novel of the season after all, though unchosen. I will not labour this point, either. Any one read "The Blue Lagoon" yet? Some folk have read it, for it is in its sixth edition. But when I say any one, I mean some one, not mere folk. It might be worth looking into, "The Blue Lagoon." _Verbum sap._, often, to Messrs. Robertson Nicoll and Shorter. In choosing "Confessio Medici" as the book of the season in general literature, Dr. Nicoll [Now Sir William Robertson Nicoll] has already come a fearful cropper, and he must regret it. I would give much to prevent him from afflicting the intelligent when the solemn annual moment arrives for him to make the reputation of a novelist.

GERMAN EXPANSION

[_18 July '08_]

I think I could read anything about German Colonial expansion. The subject may not appear to be attractive; but it is. The reason lies in the fact that one is always maliciously interested in the failures of pompous and conceited persons. In the same way, one is conscious of disappointment that the navy pother has not blossomed into a naked scandal. A naked scandal would be a bad thing, and yet one feels cheated because it has not occurred. At least I do. And I am rather human. I can glut myself on German colonial expansion--a wondrous flower. I have just read with genuine avidity M. Tonnelat's "L'Expansion allemande hors d'Europe" (Armand Colin, 3 fr. 50). It is a very good book. Most of it does not deal with colonial expansion, but with the growth and organization of Germania in the United States and Brazil. There is some delicious psychology in this part of the book. Hear the German Governor of Pennsylvania: "As for me, I consider that if the influence of the German colonist had been eliminated from Pennsylvania, Philadelphia would never have been anything but an ordinary American town like Boston, New York, Baltimore, or Chicago." M. Tonnelat gives a masterly and succinct account of the relations between Germans and native races in Africa (particularly the Hereros). It is farcical, disastrous, piquant, and grotesque. The documentation is admirably done. What can you do but smile when you gather from a table that for the murder of seven Germans by natives fifteen capital punishments and one life-imprisonment were awarded; whereas, for the murder of five natives (including a woman) by Germans, the total punishment was six and a quarter years of prison. In 1906 the amazing German Colonial Empire cost 180 millions of marks. A high price to pay for a comic opera, even with real waterfalls! M. Tonnelat has combined sobriety and exactitude with an exciting readableness.

The Book-Buyer

[_22 Aug. '08_]

In the month of August, when the book trade is supposed to be dead, but which, nevertheless, sees the publication of novels by Joseph Conrad and Marie Corelli (if Joseph Conrad is one Pole, Marie Corelli is surely the other), I have had leisure to think upon the most curious of all the problems that affect the author: Who buys books? Who really does buy books? We grumble at the lack of enterprise shown by booksellers. We inveigh against that vague and long-suffering body of tradesmen because in the immortal Strand, where there are forty tobacconists, thirty-nine restaurants, half a dozen theatres, seventeen necktie shops, one Short's, and one thousand three hundred and fourteen tea cafés, there should be only two establishments for the sale of new books. We are shocked that in the whole of Regent Street it is impossible to buy a new book. We shudder when, in crossing the virgin country of the suburbs, we travel for days and never see a single bookshop. But whose fault is it that bookshops are so few? Are booksellers people who have a conscientious objection to selling books? Or is it that nobody wants to buy books?

Personally, I extract some sort of a living--a dog's existence--from the sale of books with my name on the title-page. And I am acquainted with a few other individuals who perform the same feat. I am also acquainted with a large number of individuals who have no connexion with the manufacture or distribution of literature. And when I reflect upon the habits of this latter crowd, I am astonished that I or anybody else can succeed in paying rent out of what comes to the author from the sale of books. I know scarcely a soul, I have scarcely ever met a soul, who can be said to make a habit of buying new books. I know a few souls who borrow books from Mudie's and elsewhere, and I recognize that their subscriptions yield me a trifle. But what a trifle! Do you know anybody who really buys new books? Have you ever heard tell of such a being? Of course, there are Franklinish and self-improving young men (and conceivably women) who buy cheap editions of works which the world will not willingly let die: the Temple Classics, Everyman's Library, the World's Classics, the Universal Library. Such volumes are to be found in many refined and strenuous homes--oftener unopened than opened--but still there! But does this estimable practice aid the living author to send his children to school in decent clothes? He whom I am anxious to meet is the man who will not willingly let die the author who is not yet dead. No society for the prevention of the death of corpses will help me to pay my butcher's bill.

* * * * *

I know that people buy motor-cars, for the newspapers are full of the dust of them. I know that they buy seats in railway carriages and theatres, and meals at restaurants, and cravats of the new colour, and shares in companies, for they talk about their purchases, and rise into ecstasies of praise or blame concerning them. I want to learn about the people who buy new books--modest band who never praise nor blame, nor get excited over their acquisitions, preferring to keep silence, preferring to do good in secret! Let an enterprising inventor put a new tyre on the market, and every single purchaser will write to the Press and state that he has bought it and exactly what he thinks about it. Yet, though the purchasers of a fairly popular new book must be as numerous as the purchasers of a new tyre, not one of them ever "lets on" that he has purchased. I want some book-buyers to come forward and at any rate state that they have bought a book, with some account of the adventure. I should then feel partly reassured. I should know by demonstration that a book-buyer did exist; whereas at present all I can do is to assume the existence of a book-buyer whom I have never seen, and whom nobody has ever seen. It seems to me that if a few book-buyers would kindly come forward and confess--with proper statistics--the result would be a few columns quite pleasant to read in the quietude of September.

JOSEPH CONRAD & THE ATHENÆUM

[_19 Sep. '08_]

The _Athenæum_ is a serious journal, genuinely devoted to learning. The mischief is that it will persist in talking about literature. I do not wish to be accused of breaking a butterfly on a wheel, but the _Athenæum's_ review of Mr. Joseph Conrad's new book, "A Set of Six," in its four thousand two hundred and eighteenth issue, really calls for protest. At that age the _Athenæum_ ought, at any rate, to know better than to make itself ridiculous. It owes an apology to Mr. Conrad. Here we have a Pole who has taken the trouble to come from the ends of the earth to England, to learn to speak the English language, and to write it like a genius; and he is received in this grotesque fashion by the leading literary journal! Truly, the _Athenæum's_ review resembles nothing so much as the antics of a provincial mayor round a foreign monarch sojourning in his town.

* * * * *

For, of course, the _Athenæum_ is obsequious. In common with every paper in this country, it has learnt that the proper thing is to praise Mr. Conrad's work. Not to appreciate Mr. Conrad's work at this time of day would amount to bad form. There is a cliche in nearly every line of the _Athenæum_'s discriminating notice. "Mr. Conrad is not the kind of author whose work one is content to meet only in fugitive form," etc. "Those who appreciate fine craftsmanship in fiction," etc. But there is worse than clichés. For example: "It is too studiously chiselled and hammered-out for that." (God alone knows for what.) Imagine the effect of studiously chiselling a work and then hammering it out! Useful process! I wonder the _Athenæum_ did not suggest that Mr. Conrad, having written a story, took it to Brooklands to get it run over by a motor-car. Again: "His effects are studiously wrought, _although_--such is his mastery of literary art--they produce a swift and penetrating impression." Impossible not to recall the weighty judgment of one of Stevenson's characters upon the _Athenæum_: "Golly, what a paper!"

* * * * *

The _Athenæum_ further says: "His is not at all the impressionistic method." Probably the impressionistic method is merely any method that the _Athenæum_ doesn't like. But one would ask: Has it ever read the opening paragraph of "The Return," perhaps the most dazzling feat of impressionism in modern English? The _Athenæum_ says also: "Upon the whole, we do not think the short story represents Mr. Conrad's true _métier_" It may be that Mr. Conrad's true _métier_ was, after all, that of an auctioneer; but, after "Youth," "To-morrow," "Typhoon," "Karain," "The End of the Tether," and half a dozen other mere masterpieces, he may congratulate himself on having made a fairly successful hobby of the short story. The most extraordinary of all the _Athenæum's_ remarks is this: "The one ship story here, 'The Brute,' makes us regret that the author does not give us more of the sea in his work." Well, considering that about two-thirds of Mr. Conrad's work deals with the sea, considering that he has written "Lord Jim," "The Nigger of the _Narcissus_" "Typhoon," "Nostromo," and "The Mirror of the Sea," this regret shall be awarded the gold medal of the silly season. If the _Athenæum_ were a silly paper, like the _Academy_, I should have kept an august silence on this ineptitude. But the _Athenæum_ has my respect. It ought to remember the responsibilities of its position, and ought not to entrust an important work of letters to some one whose most obvious characteristic is an exquisite and profound incompetence for criticism. The explanation that occurs to me is that "A Set of Six" and "Diana Mallory" got mixed on the _Athenæum's_ library table, and that each was despatched to the critic chosen for the other.

* * * * *

"A Set of Six" will not count among Mr. Conrad's major works. But in the mere use of English it shows an advance upon all his previous books. In some of his finest chapters there is scarcely a page without a phrase that no Englishman would have written, and in nearly every one of his books slight positive errors in the use of English are fairly common. In "A Set of Six" I have detected no error and extremely few questionable terms. The influence of his deep acquaintance with French is shown in the position of the adverb in "I saw again somebody in the porch." It cannot be called bad English, but it is queer. "Inasmuch that" could certainly be defended (compare "in so much that"), but an Englishman would not, I think, have written it. Nor would an Englishman be likely to write "that sort of adventures."

Mr. Conrad still maintains his preference for indirect narrative through the mouths of persons who witnessed the events to be described. I dare say that he would justify the device with great skill and convincingness. But it undoubtedly gives an effect of clumsiness. The first story in the volume, "Gaspar Ruiz," is a striking instance of complicated narrative machinery. This peculiarity also detracts from the realistic authority of the work. For by the time you have got to the end of "A Set of Six" you have met a whole series of men who all talk just as well as Mr. Conrad writes, and upon calm reflection the existence of a whole series of such men must seem to you very improbable. The best pages in the book are those devoted to the ironical contemplation of a young lady anarchist. They are tremendous.

THE PROFESSORS

[_26 Sep. '08_]

The death of Professor Churton Collins appears to have been attended by painful circumstances, and one may be permitted to regret the disappearance from the literary arena of this vigorous pundit. He had an agreeable face, with pendant hair and the chin of a fighter. His industry must have been terrific, and personally I can forgive anything to him who consistently and violently works. He had also acquired much learning. Indeed, I should suppose that on the subject of literature he was the most learned man in Britain. Unfortunately, he was quite bereft of original taste. The root of the matter was not in him. The frowning structure of his vast knowledge overawed many people, but it never overawed an artist--unless the artist was excessively young and naïve. A man may heap up facts and facts on a given topic, and assort and label them, and have the trick of producing any particular fact at an instant's notice, and yet, despite all his efforts and honest toil, rest hopelessly among the profane. Churton Collins was such a man. He had no artistic feeling. Apart from the display of learning, which is always pleasant to the man of letters, his essays were arid and tedious. I never heard him lecture, but should imagine that he was an ideal University Extension lecturer. I do not mean this to be in the least complimentary to him as a critic. His book, "Illustrations Tennyson," was an entirely sterile exercise proving on every page that the author had no real perceptions about literature. It simply made creative artists laugh. They knew. His more recent book on modern tendencies displayed in an acute degree the characteristic inability of the typical professor to toddle alone when released from the leading-strings of tradition.

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