Part 14

The London Press—when it did deign to notice my work—followed the same sort of lead; and it was left (as usual) to comparative outsiders to make any real discovery in the matter. Curiously enough, a very young man (George Moore-Smith) in a long article in the _Cambridge Review_ of November 14, 1883, led the way in drawing serious attention to the first edition. The _Indian Review_ (Wm. Digby) of May 1885 had a remarkably sympathetic and intelligent notice of the second edition, and I owe much to my friend W. P. Byles’ introduction of the book to Northern readers through the _Bradford Observer_ (of March 19, 1886); also to an article by H. Rowlandson in _The Dublin University Review_ for April, 1886.

With the third edition (1892) a certain amount of timid acknowledgment set in. Notices in a few more or less well-known papers were friendly though brief and cautious, as with a scent of danger. The fourth and complete edition did not appear till ten years later (1902), and by that time the book had established itself. It had ceased to demand Press-appreciations, favorable or otherwise; and so the critics—_very luckily for themselves_—escaped, and have escaped, without ever having had to give any sort of full pronouncement or verdict on the book!

To return to the first edition. I had only five hundred copies printed; but at the end of two years when I had gathered material enough for a second edition, there was still a hundred or so of these on hand. All the same I did not feel any serious misgiving. I caused a thousand copies to be printed of the second edition (260 pp.), sent them round to the Press again, and waited. This was in 1885. If anything the reception accorded was worse than before—in a sense worse—because there was more of it! By 1892—when I needed to print a third edition—only some seven hundred copies of the second edition had gone. Seven hundred in seven years! The prospects were not good, yet I did not feel depressed. I had certainly not expected any great sale; and there were even signs of improvement. My _other_ books were beginning to attract a little attention. It was obviously also hard on this book to have it published in Manchester. So I determined to go to London. There was no possible chance of getting a publisher there to take it as his own speculation; so I went to Mr. Fisher Unwin and asked him to print at my expense and sell it on commission—which he naturally was quite willing to do! The book had now grown to 368 pp., and its price had to be raised from 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d.; but its sales actually improved, and for two or three years ranged at about two hundred copies a year. I began to think it was just possible that my little bark would navigate itself, that it would float out on deeper waters and into the world-current; when something disastrous happened which left it in the shallows for quite a few years longer.

That something was the Oscar Wilde trial or trials, which took place in the spring of 1895; but to understand how they affected _Towards Democracy_ I must go back a little. Early in 1894 I started writing a series of pamphlets on sex-questions—those questions which at that time were generally tabooed and practically not discussed at all, though they now have become almost an obsession of the public mind. As pamphlets of that kind would have no chance with the ordinary publishers, I got them printed and issued by the Manchester Labour Press—a little association for the spread of Socialist literature, on the committee of which I was. The pamphlets were _Sex-love_, _Woman_, and _Marriage_; and they sold pretty well—three or four thousand copies each. Encouraged by their success I began early in ’95 to put them together, and add fresh matter to them, till I had a book ready for publication—which I afterwards entitled _Love’s Coming-of-Age_. This book I offered to Fisher Unwin (as he was already selling _Towards Democracy_) and he accepted it—undertaking to produce the book himself and give me a fair Royalty. His Agreement was signed in June 1895.

Meanwhile, in January 1895 (though dated 1894) I issued from the Labour Press, and in the same connection as the other pamphlets, a fourth one, entitled _Homogenic Love_—which I suppose was among the first attempts in this country to deal at all publicly with the problems of the Intermediate Sex. I placed “printed for private circulation only” on the Title-page, and had only a comparatively small number of copies struck off—which were not sold but sent round pretty freely to those who I thought would be interested in the subject or able to contribute views or information upon it. My object in fact was to get in touch with others and to obtain material for future study or publication. Even in this quiet way the pamphlet created some alarm—and in the dove-cotes of Fleet Street (as I heard) caused no little fluttering and agitation; but it is quite possible the matter would have ended there, if it had not been for the Oscar Wilde troubles. Wilde was arrested in April 1895 and from that moment a sheer panic prevailed over _all_ questions of sex, and especially of course questions of the Intermediate Sex.

I did not include _Homogenic Love_ in my proposed new book, nor had I any intention of including it; but when the mere existence of the thing came to the knowledge of Fisher Unwin he was so perturbed that he actually cancelled his Agreement with me, with regard to the book _Love’s Coming-of-Age_, and broke loose from it. It was in vain that I tried to restrain him. He had got his leg over the trace, as it were, and was ‘off.’ Indeed, he was quite willing to sacrifice the expense he had already incurred (for the book was now partly set up) rather than go on with it. Under the circumstances I could not, of course, very well compel him to publish. Moreover I felt sorry for his perturbation, and quite understood some of its causes. The extent of it was finally shown by his going so far as to turn _Towards Democracy_ out of his shop, and refuse to publish _that_ any longer!

Thus my two books _Love’s Coming-of-Age_ and _Towards Democracy_—like two poor little orphans—were both out on the wide world again.

For the moment I will go on with _Love’s Coming-of-Age_. Being routed by Fisher Unwin, I went to Sonnenschein, Bertram Dobell, and others—altogether five or six publishers—but they all shook their heads. The Wilde trial had done its work; and silence must henceforth reign on sex-subjects.[19] There was nothing left for me but to return to my little Labour Press at Manchester, and get the book printed and published from there—which I did, the first edition being issued in 1896.

It is curious to think that that was not twenty years ago, and what a landslide has occurred since then! In ’96 no ‘respectable’ publisher would touch the volume, and yet to-day [1915] the tide of such literature has flowed so full and fast that my book has already become quite a little old-fashioned and demure! But the severe resistance and rigidity of public opinion at the time made the volume very difficult to write. The readiness, the absolute determination of people to _misunderstand_ if they possibly could, rendered it very difficult to guard against misunderstandings, and as a matter of fact nearly every chapter in the book was written four or five times over before I was satisfied with it.

_Love’s Coming-of-Age_ ought of course (like some parts of _England’s Ideal_) to have been written by a woman; but, though I tried, I could not get any of my women-friends to take the subject up, and so had to deal with it myself. Ellen Key, in Sweden, began—I fancy about the same period—writing that fine series of books on _Love_, _Marriage_, _Childhood_, and so forth, which have done so much to illuminate the Western World; but at that time I knew nothing of her and her work.

My book circulated almost immediately to some extent in the Socialistic world, where my name was fairly well known; but some time elapsed before it penetrated into more literary and more ‘respectable’ circles. One of the first signs of its succeeding in the latter direction took a rather amusing shape. I had, one day, to call upon a well-known London publisher (who was already publishing some of my books, though he had refused this particular one) on business, and having discussed the matters immediately in hand, he presently turned to me and inquired how my _Love’s Coming-of-Age_ was selling. I of course gave a fairly favorable account. “I think,” said he in a somewhat chastened tone “that perhaps we made rather a mistake in refusing some little time back to take it up. A Sunday or two ago I was at church [probably a Congregational or Unitarian Chapel], and the minister quoted a page or two from your book, and spoke very highly of it, and actually gave the published address and price, and all; and I saw quite a lot of people noting the references down.” He paused, and then added, “Quite a good advertisement—worth thirty or forty copies I daresay.” I could not help smiling. No wonder he was sorry! But the story gave promise of better things to come.

In 1902 the said publishing firm was glad to tale the book up and publish it on commission for me—which they (and their successors) have done ever since. And its sale in England (though not phenomenal like that of the German translation) has, I must say, been very good.

To return to _Towards Democracy_. Considering its expulsion from Mr. Fisher Unwin’s shop and the generally panicky condition of the book market in London, there seemed nothing to do but to return to Manchester and place it also in the hands of the little Labour Press for publication. The two thousand or so copies remaining in Unwin’s hands were my property, and I had only to remove them to Manchester, get a new title-page printed, and have them issued from there. This I accordingly did, and in ’96 the Labour Press edition appeared—368 pp., the same as Fisher Unwin’s. Naturally the Labour Press connection was not very favorable as regards circulation, and the price (3s. 6d.) was high for Socialist and Labour circles. The spread of the book remained slow—slower of course than it had been with Unwin, and hardly amounted to a hundred copies a year.

This was bad; but worse remained behind. Somewhere early in 1901 the Labour Press—whose financial affairs had never been very satisfactory—went bankrupt! I knew of course what was pending; and as the stock of _Towards Democracy_ belonged to _me_, and I knew that if left at the Press it would be in danger of falling into the creditors’ hands, there was nothing left but to smuggle it away as soon as I could into some place of safe keeping. Mr. James Johnston, City Councillor, always a good friend, came to the rescue and offered me storage room in his office. I hired a dray. And so one foggy day, with a good part of a ton of _Towards Democracy_ on board—which I helped to load and unload—I jogged with the drayman through the streets of Manchester amid the huge turmoil of the cotton goods and other traffic. A strange load—and I never before realized how heavy the book was!

It lay there for some months, and then about July of the same year I made arrangements with Sonnenschein & Co. for them to sell the book on commission, and the stock was transferred into their hands. From that time its sales slowly went forward—from a hundred or a hundred and fifty per annum in 1902, to eight hundred or nine hundred in 1910, when the Sonnenschein business, and with it my book, passed into the hands of George Allen & Co. In 1902 the fourth part of _Towards Democracy_, i.e. “Who shall command the Heart” was published; and in 1905 this was incorporated with the three former parts in one complete volume. Later in the same year I succeeded (a long cherished project) in producing a pocket edition of the whole on India paper, which has ever since sold alongside and _pari passu_ with the Library edition. Thus after twenty-one years (in 1902) these writings (begun in 1881) came to an end; and three years later the book took its definite and permanent form in print and binding, and some sort of rather indefinite place in the world of letters.

Talking about their place in the world of letters, some of my books have, I fear, puzzled the public by their titles. _Ioläus_ has been much of an offender in this way. The uncertainty as to who or what Ioläus might be, the difficulty of knowing how to spell the word, and the impossibility of pronouncing it, proved at one time such obstacles that they quite adversely affected the sales. On one occasion I received a telegram from a firm asking me to send at once two hundred Oil-cans. My puzzlement was great, as I had indeed never embarked in the oil trade, nor in my wildest dreams thought of doing so—till suddenly it flashed upon me that the message, having had to pass through a rustic post-office, had been transformed on the way, and that the romantic friend and companion of Hercules had been turned into a paraffin tin! After that I modified the title so as to avoid any such sacrilege in the future.

Coming back to _Towards Democracy_ again, I do not know that I have ever seen a very serious estimate or criticism of that book in any well-known literary paper. Like others of my works it has come into the literary sheep-fold not through the accepted gate but “some other way, like a thief or a robber.” It has been generally ignored—as already explained—by the guardians of the gate, yet it has quietly and decisively established itself, and the ‘sheep’ somehow have taken kindly to the ‘robber.’ And perhaps the matter is best so. A book of that kind is not easy to criticize; it cannot be dispatched by a snap phrase; it does not belong to any distinct class or school; its form is open to question; its message is at once too simple and too intricate for public elucidation—even if really understood by the interpreter. That it should go its own way quietly, neither applauded by the crowd, nor barked at by the dogs, but knocking softly here and there at a door and finding friendly hospitality—is surely its most gracious and satisfying destiny.

But though the ignoring by the critics of _Towards Democracy_ has seemed natural and proper, I confess I have been somewhat surprised by their non-recognition or non-discussion of the questions dealt with in the other books; because, as I have said these books are on a different plane from _Towards Democracy_. They deal with theories or views which flow (as I think) perfectly logically from the central idea of _Towards Democracy_—just as the different views or aspects of a mountain flow perfectly logically from the mountain-fact itself. We cannot discuss the central idea, but we can discuss the aspects, because they come within the range of intellectual apprehension and definition. If the world—it seems to me—should ever seize the central fact of such books as _Leaves of Grass_ and _Towards Democracy_, it must inevitably formulate new views of life on almost every conceivable subject: the aspects of all life will be changed. And the discussion and definition of these views ought to be extraordinarily interesting. It is therefore surprising I say that no serious discussion of the underlying or implicit assumptions of these two books has yet taken place. It is true, of course, that to-day the world is witnessing a strange change of attitude on almost all questions, and a vague feeling after the new aspects to which I am alluding; but it does not concatenate these views on to any central fact, and therefore cannot deal with them adequately or effectively. It is as if people, having taken drawings of a hitherto undiscovered mountain from many different sides, and comparing them together, should not realize that it is the _same_ mountain which they have been observing all the time, and that there _is_ a unity and a reality there which will explain and concatenate all the outlines. I say it is a little disappointing that this point has not yet been reached, because it would make the discussion and definition of the new views so wonderfully interesting. On the other hand it is obvious that in the midst of the enormous output and rush of modern literature, critics generally have thrown up the sponge, and are content to get through their work perfunctorily or as best they can, without the added labour of tackling, or attempting to tackle, a great new synthesis.

The attempt made a quarter of a century ago—in _Civilization: its Cause and Cure_—to define the characteristics of (modern) civilization, and to show the civilization-period as a distinct stage in social evolution, destined to pass away and to be succeeded by a later stage—of which later stage even now some of the features may be indicated—has never as far as I know been seriously taken up and worked out. The Socialists of course have certain views on the subject, but they are limited to the economic field, and do not by any means cover the whole ground; and various doctrinaire sets and sects are nibbling at the problem from different sides; but a real statement and investigation of the whole question, and a linking of it up to deepest spiritual facts, would obviously be absorbingly interesting. I first read the paper which bears the above name at the Fabian Society (? in 1888), and, needless to say, it was jeered at on all sides; but since then, somehow, a change has come, and even Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, who most attacked me at the time, have ceased to use the word ‘Civilization’ in its old optimistic and mid-Victorian sense. What we want now is a real summing-up and settling of what the word connotes—both from the historical point of view, and with regard to the future.

Another paper in the same book, which shocked a good many of my Cambridge friends, was my “Criticism of Modern Science.” The Victorian age glorified modern Science—not only in respect of its patient and assiduous observation of facts, which every one allows, but also on account of the supposed Laws of Nature which it had discovered, and which were accounted immutable and everlasting. A light arising from some quite other source convinced me that this infallibility of the scientific “Laws” was an entire illusion. I had been brought up on mathematics and physical science. I had lectured for years on the latter. But now the reaction set in; and—rather rudely and crudely it must be confessed—I turned on my old teacher to rend her! I published in 1885, and in Manchester, a shilling pamphlet called _Modern Science: A Criticism_, and sent it round to my mathematical and scientific friends. I think most of them thought I had gone daft! But, after all, the whirligig of Time has brought its revenge, and the inevitable evolution of human thought has done its work; and now, one may ask, where _are_ the airy fairy laws and theories of the Science of the last century? The great stores of observations and facts are certainly there, and so are the marvellous applications of these things to practical life—but where are the immutable Laws?—where are the clean-cut systems of the families and species of plants and animals? where is Boyle’s law of gases? where the stability of the planetary orbits? where the permanence and indestructibility of the atom? where is the theory of gravitation, where the theory of light, the theory of electricity? the law of supply and demand in Political Economy, of Natural Selection in Biology? of the fixity of the Elements in Chemistry, or the succession of the strata in Geology? All gone into the melting-pot—and quickly losing their outlines!

It is true that in the great brew which is being thus formed, rags and chunks of the old “Laws of Nature” are still discernible; but no one supposes they are there for long, and on all sides it is obvious that the scientific world is giving up the search for them, and the expectation (in the face of such things as radium, Hertzian waves, Karyokinesis and so forth) of ever reconstituting Science again on the old Victorian basis. These fixed ‘Laws,’ it is pretty evident, and their remaining débris, will melt away, till out of the seething brew something entirely different and unexpected emerges. And that will be?... Yes, what indeed out of such a Cauldron _might_ be expected to emerge—a strange and wonderful Figure, a living Form!

Yet the curious thing is that while this process of the dissolution of scientific theory is going on before our eyes, and on all sides, no one seems to be aware of it—at any rate no one sums it up, gives it outline and definition, or tackles its meaning and result. Tolstoy was pleased with the attacks on Modern Science contained in _Civilization: its Cause and Cure_, wrote to me about it, and had the chapter printed in Russian, with a preface by himself. But his point of view was that Science being a serious enemy to Religion anything which bombarded and crippled Science would help to free Religion. That was not my point of view. I do not regard Science—or rather Intellectualism—as the foe of Religion, but more as a stage which _has to be passed through_ on the way to a higher order of perception or consciousness—which might possibly be termed Religion—only the word religion is too vague to be very applicable here.

Another airy castle which is obviously fading away before our eyes is that of the “Laws” of Morality. The whole structure of civilization-morality is being rapidly undermined. The moral aspects of Property, Commerce, Class-relations, Sex-relations, Marriage, Patriotism, and so forth, are shifting like dissolving views. Nietzsche has scorched up the old Christian altruism; Bernard Shaw has burned the Decalogue. Yet (in this country and according to our custom) we jog along and pretend not to see what is happening. No body of people faces out the situation, or attempts to foretell its future. The Ethical society professes to substitute Ethics for Religion, as a basis of social life; yet never once has it informed us what it means by Ethics! The Law courts go mumbling on over ancient measures of right and wrong which the man in the street has long ago discarded. Much less has any group attempted to foreshadow the new Morality, and concatenate it on to the great root-fact of existence. In my “Defence of Criminals: a Criticism of Morality,”[20] I gave an outline and an indication of what was happening, and of the way out into the future; but that paper, as far as I know, has never been seriously discussed.

Nevertheless under the surface new ideas are forming, the lines of the coming life are spreading. The book _Civilization_—first published by Sonnenschein, in 1889—has had a good circulation, and been translated into many languages. Though somewhat hastily and crudely put together, yet owing to a certain _élan_ about it, and probably largely owing to the fact that it gives expression to the main issues above-mentioned, it has been well received.